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| - SUMMARY: biggest problem at this hotel is no thermostats in the room. Read on...
First, this historic hotel has 3 different Yelp listings, all with their own set of reviews. Not sure why that is, but make sure you read all of them. Yelp really should consolidate them, but for now, make sure you go to the other Arizona Biltmore listings on Yelp and check out the reviews there too....
I've spent many Christmas Eve's on the Biltmore's patio because I have family that lives just a mile away and we love the atmo. This year I decided to splurge and rent a room at Christmas. Everything you read about the "fallen on hard times" aspect of the guest rooms is true. It's obvious that Hilton (aka Waldorf Astoria) has decided to not sink any more money into this property for upkeep and they're relying on the majesty of the architecture and main lobby etc. to pull them through. The result is generally disappointing but then they're offering pretty good deals for rooms (and you can understand why since the guest rooms are somewhat run down or falling apart).
The reason we loved our stay: the pet policy. You can bring Fido and Fifi with you on your vacation. That was the big upside.
The downside:
1) NO THERMOSTATS IN THE FREAKING ROOM! Ok, Waldorf Astoria WTF? It's cold in Arizona in the winter. We needed to use the heater. Guess what? It doesn't turn off on its own once it reaches a certain/any temperature. It just keeps on blowing. So you have to get out of bed multiple times during the night to continuously turn on/off the mother-bleeping heater. After it gets too hot, jump out of bed to turn it off, then an hour later, it's cold again and you have to jump out of bed again to turn it back on. NO - it wasn't broken. We had engineering to our room twice. Each time the guys just shrugged and explained that there was no thermostat. Considering that thermostats cost all of $30, it's a travesty that GM of this hotel hasn't ordered thermostats for the guest rooms.
2) Clueless, absolutely clueless front desk personnel. The front desk personnel are mostly under 30 and maybe even under 25. Let's just say that you get what you pay for. They don't know about their own property, give out lots of wrong information and don't know themselves that there are NO THERMOSTATS IN THE GUEST ROOMS! If they knew, they wouldn't have to send engineering over to tell us. Our final bill was wrong and I had to explain to the person that checked us out how the debit/credit columns worked on the receipt I was given, explaining that we weren't credited for something we'd already paid for. They also didn't know how the bike rentals worked.
3) Severely understaffed. We had to call the front desk (or "0") many times during our stay and there were times when the phone rang over 5 minutes before ANYONE picked up, even the operator.
4) Noisy spa. Forget about that "renewal" and "rejuvenation" that the pretty brochure promises. I went to the spa 3 times and each time there were annoying chattering women dittering away about nonsense, their voices echoing against the tile, each freaking time. Some of those times it was spa personnel speaking in their loud "stage" voice. Unbelievable. Imagine trying to relax when that dittering female chatter is in Hebrew (probably the ugliest language on the planet next to German) and understand that it is no place to go if you want some peace and quiet -- no one enforces the "quiet" zones and there are no signs or verbal prompts to please keep quiet from staff.
5) Dirty premises. We saw a room service tray lying on the ground for two whole days outside the door of the room next to us and no one came to pick it up. We walked by it each time we went in/out of our room. Another time we waited all day for our room to be serviced and no one came, even 4 hours after we put in a request for it.
Our stay wasn't a total disaster, but want to realistically explain to wide-eyed potential guests that, as romantic as the premises are, the hotel is not being well managed and it is sorely in need of some repair and upgrades, and possibly a whole lot of re-training of personnel too.
We'll still probably come back, but only if they get some freaking $30 thermostats installed into the guest rooms. 3 Stars are for Frank Lloyd Wright's vision and subtract two stars for some shoddy management.
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