AC Hotel Asheville Downtown — Hotel in Asheville

Admittedly I am partially copying another review, with additional details. As a Bonvoy member I felt these items needed to be noted.

This AC location has some notable drawbacks, such as slow elevators, malfunctioning air conditioning settings, and street noise. The elevators can be frustrating, with only two available, leading to long wait times during peak periods.

The room was fairly standard and I did like the rain shower head option, once I figured out how to activate it.

The most annoying bit however, was the thermostat; it is essentially a wall fixture. It didn’t matter what temperature the thermostat was to, the room was the same temperature all the time. We would turn the fan on and find it was on a short timer. This gave us essentially no control over our environment.

As this building is located downtown, the street noise can be disruptive, and it is unfortunate that the hotel did not disclose this to guests. Fire rescue sirens sounded off at least three times each night. It was so loud, it were as if we had our windows open.

The rooms are dark and modern. The lighting is poorly designed insomuch that you cannot effectively use the bathroom mirror without bringing a lamp from the nightstand into the bathroom. The lighting in the bedroom portion was controlled by a master switch which had to be turned on prior to the rest of the lights to come on, but those lights are located under the long benches, only providing light to the floor.

The bathroom door is a sliding opaque glass door, barn door style, which does not latch or provide any real privacy at all.

Every room door has an automatic door closer, like normal. However, it seemed like every door closer on our floor had had their settings adjusted to the ‘slam closed’ setting. If you tried to sleep in at all because of the lack of sound sleep due to the siren and street noise, that sleep attempt would soon be interrupted by doors slamming all the way down the hall all morning long.

The restaurant located on the 9th floor was gorgeous but very limited in seating space. The layout was odd. It didn’t bother us, but we were surprised by the lack of railings around the rooftop seating area. The most important issue regarding the rooftop restaurant is the pricing and/ or portion size and the odd food combinations. I’m including a picture of the scallops. This tapas style entree is priced at $20 and includes 2 scallops and a small amount of black beans. The salmon entree was a salmon filet atop of a sort of chickpea salad. The beet salad includes a couple beets cut up on a small plate. The kale salad which is advertised to come with artichoke hearts, only had a few artichoke leaves. (The next night we ate there earlier and it had artichoke hearts. They may have ran out of the hearts the first night?). The mixed drinks are very expensive here. Their version of an old fashioned is $28 for example. There are MANY great places to eat in and around town. This is not one of those great places to eat.

On a positive note, the check-out process was smooth and efficient. The hotel, house keeping and restaurant staff are fantastic, very friendly and helpful. There are filtered water refill stations and complimentary small bags of ice on each floor. However, given the issues mentioned above, guests may be better off staying at another hotel. The hotel's drawbacks may significantly impact guests' experience, and they should consider their options carefully before booking, as the AC isn’t...

There’s a lot to like about the AC. It’s smack downtown—walking distance to touristy things if you’re a tourist. Nice lobby with interesting seating and a soothing color palette. If you get in late, there’s a small snack bar with stuff like beer and wine and quick snacks you can take upstairs. Desk staff on their best behavior although somewhat muted. Another plus is the upstairs restaurant. We had breakfast there twice and cocktails twice. Pleasant. Busy but the wait staff tried its best to be responsive. Expensive—but what isn’t when you’re a tourist?

The rooms are good for what they were. We paid $500+ a night for two nights and about $260 for the third and I was hoping they’d offer an upgrade when we checked in. I guess our upgrade was a “Mountain View” room. We were thrilled when the clerk told us. Don’t be. When we got to the room, we saw the real view was the parking lot. There were trees in the far background and perhaps a mountain too. It’s not really an upgrade. Other nice things: The room was clean. (Shoutout to the cleaning staff.) Great wooden-like floors. Bed linens were fresh and inviting. The mini fridge is bigger than most and worked great. The shower is great and very functional. Towels were good.

Things that could be improved: 1) The coffee and coffee machine was plastic and basic—for $500 a night I expected something better. And this is a coffee town. What about partnering with a local coffee company and upgrading the coffee/tea experience in the room? That would help the AC stand out from other boutique hotels nearby. 2) Lack of decent lighting in bathroom. I don’t love looking at myself in the bathroom mirror but the lighting is basically non-existent. It’s a heavenly rosy glow—sexy but completely not functional. And the lighting doesn’t get better in the hallway or rest of room. The place is dim. Sexy dim—but completely dysfunctional. (Although the lighting at the beds is great.) It seems like this could be an easy fix. 3) Another thing that at first bothered us but we got around it: There are no drawers to put your clothing or stuff. Not sure if they expect you to throw it all on the floor but we asked for more hangars and dealt it with it that way. There are benches against one wall so you can use that too. 4) Final little thing. Bathrobes. They’re hard to pack. So it’s nice to have them in your room. If they feel $500 a night isn’t enuf to give us a bathrobe, then how about letting us pay extra for one? I’d gladly do that.

Bottom line? The AC does a lot of things right. They don’t do anything extra, tho (chocolates at turndown or a bottle of something sparkling at check-in or just something special that delivers and inspires you to come back) and if you can overlook the small stuff mentioned in this review,...

First, we were excited to try this new hotel right in the heart of Downtown. We normally stay at the Grand Bohemian, but want to be right downtown this time. When we walked in we were greeted by a nice young lady and she proceed to check us in, we told her this was our first time at the AC and hope she might have an upgrade for us, she said of course we will get you into a balcony room with a nice mountain view. She had to grab the phone so she excused herself, when her call started to take longer than she anticipated, she motioned for another young lady to come over to help her. When we told this lady that we were checking in and that the other young lady told us about an upgrade she became irritated and said well I guess that's ok. We told her that if not that was fine but didn't understand why it was such an issue, she remained irritated and kept making comments under her breath about the upgrade. Who knows why this was such an issue but it was to her. My issue is that if you are irritated with another coworker your guest in front of you should not know that, it should be handled after the fact. We got checked in and went to our rooms. Mind you, this was a Sunday and Monday night stay so the hotel was not crowded at all. We got to our room and it was lovely, great view and spacious. When I went over to the bed I noticed black dog hair all over the pillows and on the outside of the bed coverings. I was like oh wow, when we went down to leave for the day we went over to the desk and alerted the same nice young lady that we had dog hair all over our bed and she apologized and said she would have cleaning come up while we were out. We went out for the day and when we returned I sat down on the sofa and noticed something under the coffee table, it was a chewed dog bone, well this took my husband over the edge he went downstairs with a picture of the bone and the dog covered pillow (which never got handled) when he returned he said they were moving us to another room down the hall. We move and get settled, changed then headed to dinner.When we returned from dinner I put my phone on the night stand and noticed several puddled of greasy substance on the night stand and now all over my phone. I cleaned up my phone and attempted to wipe down the night stand, well in this process I noticed used paper coffee cups under the bed. When I went back to the bathroom to grab another towel, I noticed the floor was covered in black steak marks. This...