The Society Hotel Hood River - Bingen — Hotel in Bingen

Pros (+) and Cons (-)

LOCATION Great if you want to relax and escape the city. Excellent Mexican family restaurants (walking distance), a nice pizza night at the bakery (driving distance). Hood River (across the bridge) is a quick visit with a small toll. The drive out here is gorge-ous. ;) As above, not much to do. Just an outdoor shop, a cannabis shop, and a few restaurants nearby.

ROOMS (Queen, shared bathroom) The shared bathroom was always vacant. Mini-split worked well for climate control. Others were generally quiet in the sleeping area -- at least the weekend I visited. Still, the walls are THIN. I heard very clearly the couple next door being intimate and they weren't screaming either. Oh well. Tight space. You can't leave a luggage open AND walk around, but my duffle and my partner's backpack lived under the bed for the most part, which is fine for the price!!

SERVICE People were nice and helped you if you needed help, but also they left you alone for the most part. I like that. Happy hour was nice and reasonably priced. The daily specials added some variety to the menu. I got a drink special. I arrived ~15 min early and room wasn't ready yet. I was a bit surprised. It seems they run a little thin on staff. It is expected to bus your own cups and plates (which is fine) and some people don't (which is NOT fine). I will happily clean up after myself but not after another guest. They are able to keep costs down by having some simple rules, but some feel more entitlement.

SAUNA & SPA Good temperature of the pools and sauna. Good drinking water availability. Swimsuit dryer. Guests can book extra slots on the waitlist ;) Some rowdy folks in the evening. The sound echoes loudly because of the acoustics. The noise really interferes with the calm atmosphere. After the sauna, some do not rinse off their sweat before re-entering the shared pools. Yuck. ? The sauna machines are pretty sensitive to excessive water, which can damage the heating element. Some guests don't know this, and they are overly enthusiastic with the water. Maybe it should be said somewhere...

Good/average experience for an American spa (or below average compared to Asian saunas). Most negatives are behavior related and I don't think we (Americans) have a good spa/sauna culture. I can't hold it against people if they don't know; however, I'm not really sure people are really trying to know either...

GENERAL/MISC Other guests were generally nice. Shot hoops with a little kiddo. I felt like I was good at basketball for once. Love the games and kettlebells in the gym. The property is a gem. The landscaping near the saunas is particularly nice, but I liked it throughout. The sanctuary was very cool and built into a hill. Amazing variety of public sitting areas. Indoor -- gymnasium, library, cafe, sanctuary. Outdoors -- between the front desk and the gymnasium, outside the hostel rooms, around the sauna. If you didn't get a cabin, there are some extra hammocks near the sanctuary. Electric water kettle near hostel rooms!! BYO eating supplies if you want to have a snack outside of the cafe's offerings. I had a bad experience with another guest. While I was studying for medical board exams, another guest approached me with a medical question. I gave her an honest answer, which she completely rejects and tells me that I'm wrong. I try to explain to her why I came to the answer. Turns out, she is the type of person that doesn't believe in scientific research, and no amount of reasoning was going to shake her beliefs. I apologized for whatever bad experience she had in the past and the hurt it caused, and I hoped that she finds out what hurt her -- but I stood by what I said and I do NOT think that her problem was caused by XYZ medical topic. I excused myself. She ended up insulting me and my entire field under her breath, and my partner told her she was very rude for that exchange. Very frustrating when you are trying to relax.

TL;DR: Cool place. Most guests are fine. Some are...

Almost there... The Society stands out in Bingen like a sore thumb on a hand model. The old renovated schoolhouse turned shared bathroom hotel sits next to an oddly shaped rounded structure with their “cabins” available for the night. We stayed during the “soft open” so take this review lightly as I’m aiming it at management in hopes of constructive feedback for improvements. Let’s start with the staff... genuine, helpful and kind. Everyone that I touched questions with tried their best to be helpful. While not everyone had the answers they were friendly and nothing less than professional. Your front desk host never made us aware of any WiFi and never made us aware that there was a $10 fee for accessing the small pool area. No tour of the grounds was given and there was very little offered in the means of what surrounds the hotel. The rooms. The first room we were given looked nothing like the room in the ad. They switched us to a different room (thank you). The King size bed was comfortable and the pillows were pretty great. The room offers no extra blankets and given the ceiling position of the air conditioning unit, one side of the bed is much cooler than the other. Consider a plate to redirect the air across the ceiling and not aimed at the bed. The large schoolhouse windows are covered in plexiglass and cannot be opened. Why? The dry desert night breeze would’ve had me sleeping like a baby. The paper thin walls are just that. I could hear the tapping of a toothbrush and a man on his phone as if they were right next to me. Not much can be done about this. It’s also easy to deal with. The bathrooms were fine. There’s also a ton of them throughout the hotel. Clean, small... everything you’d expect. The cafe/pool/sauna area... oddly placed and oddly shaped. The concrete path that leads up to this building needs some stepping stones through the flower beds. The hot tub wasn’t above air temp and the café needs to be stocked and setup for mornings. We ordered drip coffee (x2) and avocado toast (x2) and waited over 30 minutes for our order. The door leading to your sit down patio was broken. It let us out but not back in as it was hanging up on the lower door frame. No refills offered on drip coffee. Had to pour cream from the stock container. All of this I could genuinely care less about but what I’m paying for is the experience of a get a way or mini escape from home. The Sanctuary isn’t open yet so we couldn’t visit the underground or in the hillside retreat room. Food and drink options are sub-par and very chic. Small plates sold at the price of a 5 star establishment. The “bar” which is really just the coffee stand offers a fair selection but was out of key ingredients to make certain drinks. We left and went up to TarWater in White Salmon, up the hill. Upon leaving you could see about twenty bags of trash piled up next to the trash can outside. Again, personally don’t care but also don’t care to be paying what you’re asking and then running across all of the details missed. All & all it was a nice get a way for a night but Society is lacking. The staff was friendly but that doesn’t quite equate to the price your asking while the establishment is still under construction, your bar is out of items and things like, the broken hot tub, sanctuary not open, etc. turn on your fire pits, put a roll cart outside with drinks where there is seating. Make a more comfortable spot to sit inside near your coffee and bar. Dim the lights a little at night. Show your guests around when they show up. Get a means for charging the room when ordering at the pool cafe. It’s little things that make a difference. All in all, thank you for building in Bingen. We look forward to seeing you grow and we can’t wait to try you again during our next...

I followed The Society Hotel Bingen on IG ages ago and was so excited to try out the accommodations for an annual girls trip. Unfortunately after our three night stay I left fairly disappointed.

Check In: My friend and I arrived about an hour and a half prior to check-in. I was told at the front desk that our room was not ready, but we would receive a text message if it were ready early. I never received a text for early check-in - no big deal. However, when I returned at 1615 (check-in is advertised as 1600), I was told by front desk staff off-handedly that they “thought” my room should be ready. It was in fact ready, but if check-in is at 1600, why would my room not have been ready? And why not check to make sure rather than say something dismissive to a customer checking in?

Parking: The hotel has a gravel parking lot and I input my car’s license plate as requested prior to our arrival. Thursday night parking was not an issue. However, Friday and Saturday nights the parking lot was absolutely bursting. In my opinion each reservation should be allowed one car parked in the lot. Overflow parking includes side streets around the property in the surrounding neighborhood. Also, there was a parking spot immediately next to the stairs to the main building marked ‘Employee of the Month’. The spot remained empty for my entire stay on the property. There was staff parking in a different area of the property - why not place the ‘Employee of the Month’ spot in an employee designated area rather than the already overcrowded guest lot?

Housekeeping: Upon arrival to our cabin, we noticed some trash under the bench seat that was missed when the unit was cleaned, but that was not the biggest deal. However, the ants were. In the bedroom I stayed in, ants were all over the shelving unit. My bedroom was the furthest from the kitchen area and the ants were exclusively on the shelving unit - nowhere else - which indicated a possible infestation problem. When I stopped by the front desk, I was told by the staff “Well - it is spring”. Staff agreed to have housekeeping come by to clean and place traps, though when we returned to our room later that afternoon it was clear no one had been by. The next day we made sure our housekeeping sign was out and requested a clean. However when we returned to the cabin around 1600 our room had not been serviced. It was frustrating to say the least, but my friend was not feeling well and wanted to lay down for a nap. Housekeeping finally came by around 1630 and left linen at our request, but did not take away the dirty bathroom linen. Instead we were left with a plastic linen bag to fill ourselves, which baffled me. Spa: The spa is a European style spa with a cold plunge, warm pool, hot pool and sauna. The spa itself was enjoyable. However, the spa attendants were intermittently lax in allowing guests to stay longer than the allotted hour and strict requiring guest to leave the spa exactly at the end of their allotted time. There is also no way to directly call the spa - you must either book/cancel everything online or go in person. On a positive note both our facials were excellent. The esthetician was knowledgeable and we loved the last minute 30% deal, which I am sure they use to fill spots so definitely use it if offered!

Final Thoughts - The lax attitude of the front desk staff and the housekeeping issues makes a $1300 three night stay very overpriced. The parking issues also added to my frustrations during our stay. The property is well located to all the sights of the Gorge. However, our experience at The Society definitely did not match the price tag or the upscale experience their...