Historic Hotel Bethlehem — Hotel in Bethlehem

IF THERE IS A SINGLE REVIEW THAT YOU SHOULD READ ABOUT THE BETHLEHEM HOTEL, THIS IS IT!!!

I am a business traveler that travels approximately 48 weeks per year. As such, I have encountered some of the best hotels and certainly some of the worst hotels throughout the country. Customer service can be the key component to the hotel experience, regardless of the room, location, price, etc….

The Bethlehem Hotel, by far, exceeds any and ALL levels of customer service imaginable!!!

When I checked in to the hotel on my recent stay, I realized that my business dress shirts, which were folded in valet bag, had been lost/dropped while exiting Philadelphia International Airport. Therefore, I was left with the singular shirt that I had been wearing all day since departing Miami International Airport at 6 AM. In other words, I’m sure that my shirt STUNK!!

I asked the gentleman at the front desk, Carlos, if there were any shops on Main Street in Bethlehem that sold business dress shirts. He informed me that, unfortunately, there were none. However, he offered to have one of the bellman drive me to a local mall where I could purchase a dress shirt from various department stores for my upcoming meetings.

Point number one, he didn’t simply inform me that I could go to the mall myself and get a shirt. He offered the services of the hotel to drive me there to make it more convenient (even though I had a rental vehicle).

Since I was completely exhausted from my travels, and meetings throughout the day (and starving….. trying to find any place for dinner) I declined the offer. I settled into the “figure it out later” mode.

He must’ve recognized the disappointment on my face and offered another suggestion. He simply stated that, when I returned from dinner to the hotel, just bring him my shirt and he would have it washed and dried overnight.

Point number two, housekeeping was gone and laundry services were not available at this late hour. Nevertheless, he informed me about a small washer and dryer that they had available.

He just asked me if I would be OK ironing the shirt, which I absolutely agreed to do. My dilemma had been solved!!!!! NO STINKY SHIRT for my upcoming meetings!!!!!

Carlos also asked me if would be OK to return the shirt to me in the morning. I immediately agreed to the suggestion and thanked him for his offer of cleaning my shirt.

Carlos was taking on this additional task just to assist a guest. In fact, when I received his phone call in the morning that my shirt was ready and hanging on my door knob to the room, he further informed me that he came in early in order to iron the shirt for me so that I would not have to.

Point number three, c’mon, seriously!!!! He came in early to iron my shirt!!!! Need I say more.

To many this may seem like a basic offer to launder a shirt. However, this is an extremely rare, if ever, offer by an individual at a hotel in order to accommodate a guest. I wasn’t given excuses (laundry is closed, stores are closed), I was given a SOLUTION!!!!

This example truly exemplifies the extent to which The Bethlehem Hotel will go in order to accommodate guests at any and all levels. I have only experienced similar EXTREME customer service situations at very expensive high-end properties (i.e. - Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington DC. In fact, this example of customer service at The Bethlehem Hotel in the middle of Pennsylvania was pleasantly shocking.

Furthermore, beyond the extreme example of outrageously, amazing, customer service, I found the room, albeit small, due to the age of this historic property, to be quite comforting, cozy, and efficient for me as a businessman doing work throughout my stay.

One additional surprise was the speed of the Internet. Many hotels provide free Internet at slow speeds (i.e. - 5 MB). If you want a faster, speed, which most business professionals desire, there is always an additional fee. They offer a FREE guest network that consistently had a 100 MB speed for the benefit of business professionals...

I am legitimately confused and wonder if I exist in the same universe as many of these reviews. I was recently here for a wedding reception and I can say it was among the worst, if not the worst, large party to which I have ever been. I cannot speak to the rooms, but, suffice it stay that, by the end of the evening, I was glad to not be staying at the hotel any longer.

Let's start with the venue. If you are not staying overnight, there is a separate parking lot for which they provide a free shuttle back and forth. This is understandable, except that this outside parking lot is under the highway and is shared with rusty trailers that appear to not have been moved in a very long time. There is also no security there. I very much regretted taking items that needed to be left in the car.

Then there is the room where they held the cocktail hour. While there is often not enough seating for everyone at a cocktail hour, the problem was particularly bad here. The room was so overcrowded for a wedding of about 150 people that you could barely get up to get to the 5 food items offered (more on that later). But, at least the bar was in the same room the cocktail hour was held in.

Next is the "grand" ballroom. For approximately 150 guests, seating had to be split across multiple floors. While we were lucky enough to be on the main floor, many people had to use stairs all night to interact with other guests. Fortunately, there was actually little reason to come down unless you wanted to access the bar. The dance floor legitimately was so small that it could accommodate maybe 25 people comfortably. Any more and there was no room to actually move. It was also oddly shaped. Any of those traditional dances that involve a circle? I hope you enjoy transitioning to an oblong shape where you will be bumping up against the person in the middle of the circle.

As for the bar, it didn't even fit in the ballroom. You had to exit the room through doors that were closed all evening and, if you were on one half of the room, you had no choice but to elbow through the dance floor just to access the doors. I watched more than a number of people drop their beverage merely attempting to get back to their seat.

Finally, let's discuss the food. For the cocktail hour, the braised beef sliders were incredibly dry and the pulled pork sliders were somehow tasteless. The cold cuts offered were fine, but there was nothing that had to be done to those. Any other items being walked around by waiters tasted like they came from Costco. Now, that's not a bad thing (for Costco), but probably not the venue is aiming for.

The worst offender of the evening might have been the penne bolognese. The pasta (all 12 pieces on the plate) was disgustingly overdone, the bolognese sauce was very gritty (it seriously felt like when my toddler put sand in my mouth on the beach), and then they put pesto on it in what I can only gather was an attempt to try to salvage any hope this dish may have had.

The caesar salad would have been good had there been dressing on more than two pieces of lettuce. The filet mingon was disgustingly overdone and, from taste and texture, appeared to simply be baked. In a first for me, and seemingly many other confused guests, there was no coffee or tea offered with dessert. Anyone driving home had to go find a nearby Wawa to get caffeine for the drive.

By the end of the evening, the wait staff had also managed to make a disaster of the non-dance floor areas by continuously dropping whole plates of food and many empty dishes, somehow.

Maybe it was an off-night for the venue (though some things, like the parking lot, are clearly established), but for someone whose first interaction it was with this venue, it will also...

We had a series of mishaps that really colored our stay at Hotel Bethlehem, but the service across the board was fantastic. This is our second stay and the rooms are surprisingly large for a historic hotel, which was great for our family of 4 who stayed in one room, and it was spacious enough for my in-laws to also come hang out with us.

However, while the service was phenomenal, it feels like management really dropped the ball in regards to our stay on multiple occasions. We booked our 4 night stay in August for the week of Christmas. When we were discussing the availabilities for the rooms on the phone, we ended up booking adjoining rooms for us and my in-laws, and we decided to stay over Christmas Eve bc we were told that the Christmas morning brunch would include an appearance with Santa and Buddy the Elf. This was the sole reason we booked our stay through Christmas Eve onto Christmas morning as we only live 90 minutes away and we were told repeatedly that it would be magical for our kids to be able to have breakfast with Santa on Christmas morning.

When we checked in, we were told there were no adjoining rooms available. The front desk staff that checked us in were very apologetic and upgraded my in-laws' room and it was down the hall from us. We did not have another choice, and was grateful their room was not on another floor as my mother-in-law has mobility issues, hence why we wanted her close.

An hour after we checked in, a fire alarm went off in the building, asking us all to leave as soon as possible. We were on the 9th floor. We had to help my MIL, as well as our children, down the emergency stairs. I understand this was in no way the fault of the hotel, but when we got downstairs, there was not a single member of staff who gave any info out to the guests who were milling around. The staff looked very flustered themselves and when I did try to ask, I was told "I don't know, I'm sure someone will tell you." We were then told the firefighters needed to come reset the alarm before the elevators would come back on but after about 30 minutes, we realized guests were using them so we finally headed back upstairs.

The rest of our stay was relatively uneventful until Christmas morning. The brunch IS phenomenal, however, my in-laws are vegetarians. The brunch is not something we would have considered when they are obviously not going to partake in the carving stations or seafood spreads at $70 per person. However, we did book it for all of us bc my in-laws wanted to see our kids with Santa and Buddy - something we had been promising them through the entire holiday season. When I inquired on what time they were meant to make an appearance, a couple of the servers told me they weren't sure, and then finally one of the staff came to tell us Santa and Buddy are only scheduled for Sunday brunches. We were in shock, and the kids were understandably upset. We were told, "We're not sure why they told you they would be here today, they're never scheduled for any other day expect Sunday."

We had also planned on room service for Christmas dinner, with the sole vegetarian gnocchi plate on the menu for my mil. However, we found out they were only doing the special Christmas dinner menu, which did not include any vegetarian dishes, aside from the salads. We ended up ordering off the children's menu for buttered noodles as her option.

These were all issues we asked about prior to us booking and we just felt we were misinformed on so many things that really affected our stay. The hotel was beautifully decorated and again, the staff overall were so kind and friendly, but were all somehow...