Pierre M.
Yelp
Good: The breakfast buffet was delicious. (The fruit was ripe!) Mina Yanni, the dining supervisor helped me out after I had to wait 20 minutes to **place** a lunch order at the understaffed bar one busy day. That was a frustrating experience, but him, plus the other pleasant people working there made it bearable. Service was about the best thing this hotel had going for it. The people made it work. Good drinks at the bar, nice coffee. If the service at this place had been merely average, I'd give it two stars, but the people made it worth 4. Thanks, Mina.
Bad:
1. The A/C for the place never really dries the air. It was stuffy and damp the entire time throughout the lobby and the large ballroom. Also, the climate control situation in my room never allowed it to get satisfactorily cool enough. I told management, and they sent an engineer up to fix it, but it still never got cool enough for me to sleep comfortably. During the busiest day of the show, I asked management to turn up the A/C, but despite that, nearly everybody I saw at the DC pen show in the first weekend of August 2017 was sweating. You could see it on their faces. It was almost unbearable. If I had to be walking around at a show, I would limit my time there. The only saving grace was that I was seated.
2. [At the time of this writing] this hotel is in an upscale food desert. If you don't want to eat at the hotel, and you can't drive, you're pretty much screwed. I've heard of some people ordering Jimmy John's, but there's really not much there. If you're staying at this hotel on a business trip, your non-hotel options are limited, and if they have a repeat of the understaffing that I witnessed the Saturday I was there, that doesn't bode well in keeping hunger (and patience) at bay.
3. The men's bathroom on the first floor lobby never really got clean. It also is very poorly ventilated. On a high traffic day, like a wedding or the convention I went for, it turns into a swamp. I commented about it, but with a situation like the show I went for, there really needs to be maximum possible attention paid to the bathrooms. Nothing kills your opinion of a place faster than a poorly ventilated bathroom with what looks like indelible piss on the floor.