I’ve just completed a four day stay at this hotel was pleased for the most part, and if I were to Houston, I would stay there again. However, this was not a perfect stay. The rooms are spacious and I was pleased with the amenities. The problem lies squarely on flaw: poor service. I found the desk staff in reception extraordinarily efficient and knowledgeable. The food in Erik’s Restaurant was impeccable. The wait staff was inefficient, inexperienced, and unsatisfactory. Slow service every day at every meal. The hotel staff is almost exclusively students from the Tourism and Hospitslity department from the university and worked in two gears/-slow and slower. They were consistently late in acknowledging the diners when they waited to be seated. The hotel was hosting at least two conferences and because there were no integer dining options than the hotel during our stay, we were forced to stay at the hotel for breakfast and dinne. It was the common practice to stand at the entrance five, ten, even fifteen minutes just to get acknowledged. The wait staff seemed unfamiliar with certain items on the menu, even requesting bottled water by brand confused several of my servers. We were served soup with no spoons; seated but had not had our orders taken in a reasonable amount of tine. Served, but then forgotten. Inexcusable.
Another observation my colleagues and I made was that they seemed perpetually under-staffed. I counted no more than four servers at any meal; yet the restaurant was almost always full. The food was consistently delicious, dining experiences were soured by the exceptionally poor service.
The accommodations were also equally bad as they were good. The rooms were spacious, but only esoterically clean. The bed reminded me of what it must feel like to be a babe in swaddling clothing. Great mattress and extra soft linens. Everything positively crisp and white. Nonetheless, the rooms were not exceedingly clean. I left the room for two hours, returned to find the bed made, the wet towels removed, and a very strong scent of a room deodorizer, but nothing was actually cleaned. The sink was rinsed and dried, but hair was on the counter and on the floor. The shower’s grout was black in the corners and the shower door, the glass, still had the water from my shower on it and the part that was dry still had the circular patterns that dried in streaks from what I assumed was the last time the glass had been cleaned. Several people on the floor had room service for breakfast yesterday and when we returned after 10:00pm, the dirty dishes and trays were still in the hall. Again, the hotel seemed grossly understaffed
In spite of the moderate inconveniences related to the restaurant dining experience, and the lack of profound cleaning from one day to the next, I very much liked the hotel, which is why I didn’t rate the hotel just “good”. There are glitches that can certainly be resolved, but anyone staying here should expect some problems.