The Serrano Hotel (Kimpton Hotel) is truly a charming, "boutique" style hotel, in a convenient location near Union Square in San Francisco. The lobby is tasteful, lush, large, comfortable and inviting. Staff are generally friendly, though night staff during the week are considerably less interested in being helpful (or even acknowledging you - they tend to avoid eye contact in case you need something, and then report they can only do so much, there's only one on duty, etc.) than weekend staff - who go out of their way to be courteous and interested. Rooms are tastefully and charmingly decorated with appealing color in an almost art deco style decor. We had a king executive suite, and the bathroom was quite large - more so than most hotels - with a huge jet tub. The 2nd room/living room area is comfortable; flat screen tv in each room, with a mini bar and fridge. It's old-world style with modern comforts. The location is quite good - not right at Union Square but close enough to walk anywhere - down to Market and shopping, Union Square of course, theaters, and restaurants all over - in fact, there were several 24 hour restaurants within 2 blocks. You don't want to go in one direction toward the Tenderloin, but that's entirely avoidable. Good parking, right across street or even next to hotel. There's a wine happy hour, and coffee & tea served in the morning. The attached restaurant/bar serves largely as a (rather raucous) bar, though the quality of the food is actually quite good, if expensive. Now the flaws. One of the biggest: there is no door to the bedroom, only pull curtains on a shower-style bar. This was decidedly a problem for noise levels; we were told 4 people would have no problem in our suite, so we brought our 2 teenagers, but could not have different hours (light shows through) or tv on in one room, not the other (all sounds come through - might as well be the same room - well, really it is). Also, the bathroom door is a slide closet-style door, with no lock. Little room for privacy there. The bathroom tub, while huge, also has a large surround - read "high" to get in and out of. Also in the bathroom, there is little space to hang towels, except right by the toilet - yuck. They need a few bars and hooks for towels and clothes. Back to the bedroom. We had a king bed. A very saggy king bed. VERY saggy! It really does need replacement, and was hard on our backs. Hot baths helped, but really, isn't the first thing to address in a hotel room a comfortable night's sleep? A good bed is necessary! The pull-out sofa queen bed is useless. It was a thin 1 1/2" springy, yucky mattress. Further, when it pulled out, there was no room to pass by in order to get to the bathroom from the bedroom. We put the sofa bed back up, and our youngest teen slept on the sofa itself, while we got an inflatable single bed to put down on the floor for our other teen. So really, beds are quite a problem here, at least as we experienced them. On the plus side, the hotel is quiet. We asked for a quiet room, and we certainly got one, at the back and corner of the hotel; we appreciated them addressing our concerns. In fact, they sent a lovely welcoming email and informational message before we arrived, truly seeming to want to address all of our needs. Pity that the staff was actually less than accommodating (when we required blankets for our beds that first night, for instance), or whenever we had to get assistance. They always seemed so sullen and grudging. Also, we had an incredibly annoying problem with the entry light flashing on - almost every hour it seemed - on our first night, waking up both myself and my husband constantly and really, taking away from enjoying our first full day of holidays, as we were so very tired from being woken up all night! We noted that when anyone pushed the outside "bell" this entry light would turn on; perhaps someone was playing pranks in the hall all night? My husband finally unscrewed the light bulb, but the staff really was not very helpful (rather dismissive and abrupt actually) in addressing the problem. Almost like they didn't believe us. They passed it on to the management, who would not be there till the following day so they couldn't do anything about it, blah blah blah and etc. So to sum up: the location, style, decor - all good. The hotel itself is rather charming. The room was large and quiet. But the lack of a good night's sleep is rather high on the complaint list, don't you think, with a saggy bed, no bedroom door, and a pull-out bed that was truly awful and unacceptable, really. Would we stay here again? Not with two teens, certainly. But its charm is appealing, and for a couple (and if all the beds are not like our very saggy king bed), then perhaps it's worth it. The Hotel Abri, nearby, would probably rate higher for us. Smaller and somewhat noisier at street level, but more comfortable (and the staff 100 times more helpful! Take note, Hotel Serrano!) for a boutique hotel in the Union Square area.
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