Review of The Westin Alexandria Old Town 4*

Disappointing. I was expecting much more from a 4 star hotel. The room and bathroom were both very clean. That was the best part of my stay. The worst part about this hotel was the management. It seems that nobody working there has a clear idea of what is actually going on and it was impossible to get a straight answer from anyone. For example, we were charged a $50 holding fee twice, and when we inquired about it, we got two different answers. One response was that it was in case we stole anything, and the other response was that it was to cover anything like room service (? ). The fee was eventually not charged to our account upon checkout, but that in itself seemed shady. Again, nobody could tell us exactly what was going on. We were also told by management that we could utilize street parking for free instead of the valet parking (saving us about $26/night) which was the ultimate reason why we chose this hotel. However, we were still given a ticket. When we tried to contact the hotel, Westin staff was uninterested in this problem that they helped to create. We had a question about paying with Wi-fi and called the front desk who then told us we had to physically go to the front desk to resolve the issue. When we went to the front desk, we were then told that they couldn't resolve it right then at the front desk, but it was rather an issue to bring up at checkout. It felt like we were being sent in circles to resolve any small inquiry or issue. We also accepted the front desk offer to have a more eco-friendly experience and get a $5 voucher by declining housekeeping during our stay. Regardless of our acceptance, we had housekeeping interrupt us twice within about an hour time span. Other highlights: The AC worked for about 4 hours at a time. Wi-fi access is about $10/day. My boyfriend and I both had laptops, and purchasing the Wi-fi package only gave us access to the internet on one of our laptops. This was incredibly inconvenient. I could not imagine spending up to $60 on Wi-Fi for our 3 night stay. I have never experienced a hotel whose staff so clearly has problems with communicating. The valet staff did not communicate with the hotel staff, the hotel staff did not communicate with the other hotel staff, and the hotel staff did not communicate with us. This is a clean hotel, and I consider that to be incredibly important in choosing a hotel, but it wasn't until this experience that I realized just how important decent customer service is in a hotel, too. Lesson learned.