Erica R.
Yelp
I've stayed in a couple StayPineapple hotels now (I really enjoy their comforters/bedding), so I certainly had some preconceived notions about what this specific location would be like (comparing to The Alise in Chicago, or The Maxwell in Seattle, etc. - previous experiences which felt super luxurious). Compared to those locations, the Rose Hotel wasn't exactly what I expected.
As usual with a StayPineapple location, the staff is lovely, personable, and very helpful. Admittedly, I also pushed a bit after seeing the initial room that I was given. My mother was with me - visiting Portland was a treat for her birthday weekend, so I wanted her to have a nice view from the room - and the room we were initial provided on the 2nd floor may have been facing the water, but the view of the water was almost completely obstructed by trees outside the window. I went back down to the front desk to ask if it would be possible to get our room changed and was assisted by a very nice front desk employee who also made the point to go upstairs and check the view from the room on the fourth floor before ultimately assigning it to us when he confirmed there was a view with plenty of water.
Side note: my friends that came to Portland with my mother and I brought their dog - and, upon check-in, were provided with a variety of items as part of the hotel's "pup package", including bowls and a dog bed. There are also treats available in the lobby for pups staying in the hotel, as well as extra water bowls for thirsty pups coming back in from a walk outside, etc. - given that finding a hotel that would allow dogs was a priority for this overnight trip, I'd say that Hotel Rose covered that requirement nicely.
In terms of the hotel rooms generally though, they're certainly not the nicest I've ever stayed in... the bathrooms could use a scrubbing / general refreshing, and there were various wonky aspects... like the time that every time I got on my bed, the light on the neighboring table would flicker. The light was plugged into an outlet behind the top of the bed, and some aspect of the connection should probably be looked at. The plug was definitely secure in the outlet, but there was still flickering every time.
I'd also say that dealing with the room temperature is a bit off-putting. There's no real option to easily control the temperature in your room... it's either the A/C is on or off, and when it's off? The room gets quite stuffy. Could you open a window? Probably... but the amount of traffic noise is then going to make your sleep difficult. (And for the particular night that we stayed, the Portland Marathon was happening the next morning... so activities for runners that had an early start began at around 4:30am.)
Finally, the bedding wasn't quite as clean as I would have hoped. While I generally love the bedding used in StayPineapple hotel locations, there were some specks on my comforters that I had to brush off (from top and bottom) before re-arranging my bed.
TL;DR The hotel building itself is fairly old, and you just really feel the impact of that with lot of your general experiences while staying here. Yes, the staff is lovely and they're very service-minded, but this hotel itself is going to need an overhaul of some kind just due to the outdated nature of the building infrastructure... which, honestly, might be true of almost all of Downtown Portland at this point. Things are looking rough out there.