The Dewberry Charleston — Hotel in Charleston

This review is for The Living Room in the Dewberry.

A friend is leaving for a job in Germany for a year, and my friends and I wanted to celebrate and have a little evening out to say good luck and see ya later the night before he leaves. I suggested the Living Room at the Dewberry because I’ve been in the past and knew it was a bar with a large area that could accommodate people coming and going. The night was super nice until people started to head out and we needed to start closing out checks. At that point, we were told by the cocktail waitress that she could only separate the check 4 ways. confusion I communicated that we weren’t all together (20ish people… who didn’t even all know eachother) and we could just close out individually. I ended up getting up to speak with her away from the group (since the live band set up literally 2 feet from my chair and I could barely hear myself think at this point) and she got her manager. The manager said that she could maybe do 6 ways because of ‘their system’, and that’s when I expressed that at no point had it been communicated we’d all be on the same check and if that were the case we would have all ordered another way as no one was prepared for those kinds of charges. 6 ways then magically became 8, and she said she’d see what she could do. I walked back over to our corner expecting her to follow-up, but after about 5 minutes I see the cocktail waitress going to talk with someone at the other end of the group. more confusion Turns out she was telling THEM that they could do 8 ways but they would all need to be evenly split charges. No one ever came to address it with me again and I’m fairly certain I was actually being avoided. One poor soul ended up volunteering as tribute and put the entire charge on her card and then we all spent upwards of half an hour going through 1 printed out itemized receipt to individually reimburse her.

So, if you feel like whipping out your abacus and playing CPA for the evening, then by all means, consider the Living Room at the Dewberry. But if you just want to have a casual evening out where people can meet up, get a couple of drinks and maybe a little snacky snack, I highly suggest you go elsewhere.

Incredibly poor communication. Incredibly poor customer service. The situation could have been remedied with super basic customer service training. Hiding behind ‘your system’ instead of taking the time to redo checks or allowing us to close out at the bar is so wild to me. It’s a POS system. Your system may max out on how many cards per transaction, but you can separate the transactions. You’re just choosing not to.

As a business owner, I love a good policy as much as the next girl, but policies need to be communicated. If we all needed to pretend to not actually know eachother so we could close out our own tabs, then tell us from the start to pretend to be strangers…. who just happened to wander in and sit near eachother. Put it in your cocktail menu. On a placard. Projected on the ceiling. Have us sign a literal waiver before we order. Literally anywhere. Or, the easiest way IMO, is to have your employees trained on how to communicate policies with their actual human mouths to customers from the start.

I know food and bev is tough out there, so this is mostly a reflection on the leadership at the Dewberry. They’re obviously more interested in profit over people. Projected ambiance over their customer’s actual experience.

I’ve recommended this place to so many friends visiting from out of town and multiple local clients but had no idea this could be a potential outcome. So I won’t be doing that again. Overall, a really great evening turned incredibly frustrating because of a swift and disconcerting breakdown in basic customer service. Honestly embarrassed I suggested this...

We stayed at the Dewberry for SEWE this past year after friends and other expo guests had raved about it for several years.

Cons- First I was highly disappointed that the hotel is no longer dog friendly, this is one of the largest sporting dog events in the south and pretty much everyone travels with their dogs. Upon arrival the room I had booked I thought came with one of the soaking tubs as pictured in the photos, once I reached the room and realized there was no tub the staff went back downstairs to move me into another room. Then I got a phone call from a different person saying there were no other rooms available with the tubs although I had checked in on the first day of the event. So if you specifically want one of those fabulous soaking tubs that they have in their photos in the rooms then you have to request that. I booked our room through Amex travel portal which gives you the option for an upgrade if available which was never offered even after the bathtub issue and the special hotel offer was a driver service to the airport and back so if you weren't flying into the airport it wasn't even an amenity you could use. The downstairs bar area is a great option for dining and drinks but it is first come first serve and lots of outside guests come to drink and dine, which would be fine on a normal weekend I would assume but with the event in town people were hovering like hawks to get a table. There was no preference for hotel guests. I find that completely rude to hover over someone while eating and drinking to swoop in and try to get their table. Finally I did address this with one of the staff members and he secured a table thankfully.

Pros- The staff are incredible, all very friendly, and the bartenders are the best in Charleston. The rooftop bar has the best views in the city and there is a waiting system to get upstairs that does give preference to hotel guests. I enjoyed the views and drinks upstairs but preferred the coziness and warmth of the downstairs living room/bar area. The food and oysters downstairs were unmatched and they had a special drink partnership with Garden and Gun going on which was creative and a great cause for conservation.

I hope that in the future the hotel will consider allowing dogs even if it is for the event week only. The Langham hotels are similar in the way they restore historical buildings and offer an incredible service and amenities, this is what I had hoped for at the Dewberry but it did fall short in a few ways. Overall I would stay here again as I attend SEWE every year but would be more specific about my room and would email ahead to see if they could change out the amex amenity offering for something that could be used by...

Never have I had to write a review so fast so to save others from booking what is seemingly rated as a 5-star but has so many issues (from multiple guests over the past couple days at the same time as me) that there is no way it can be categorized as a 5-star except for the pricing.

Where shall I start? Let's start with the last issue on our way out from already cancelling our stay early and having to switch hotels. We were in room 726, and saw a cockroach (see photo). Literally felt like I was being punked at this point of the stay. If cockroaches are up on the 7th floor, you know they're everywhere... Apologies for the novel-length review, but thought it was worth sharing the litany of issues so you know it's not just an isolated one issue of cockroaches, although that would be a deal breaker for me on its own.

The infrastructure of this hotel's walls and insulation is zero. They have used none--in both rooms we had to be in, we could hear full conversations of our neighbors and coughing as if we were all sharing a house. Absolutely no privacy. Also, if you're on the 7th floor, be prepared to hear the rooftop bar until 10pm, so no early nights on any high up floors are possible--unless you want to wear ear plugs. If you think you still want to try this place out, bring your ear plugs.

The second room, 726, also had a leaky shower due to the design with no lining in the cracks of the glass door, puddles all over floor. Oh, and no idea about this: but there was actual hair stuck in the bathroom door frame (see photo). That was a first for me at a hotel. Gross upon gross.

Our first room, we were placed in an ADA room (406), which by the way, wasn't actually even fully ADA compliant even though we didn't need that. Fair warning there... I was willing to go for it, until the noise issue on the first night started, the shower pressure was horrible and woke up in the morning to old sheets being used. Hole in the bedsheet. (See photo).

Last, upon switching rooms to try and have a better stay, we gave up the room for 8 hours (read: gave them time / money back for a room we paid for), and then upon checking into the second room, they lost our luggage. They were supposed to bring it to the second room, it wasn't there, and not at the bell hop. And the manager had no explanation for where it could be. So we had to wait another 20-30 mins for our bags to just show up with no reasoning as to what happened. Good to know guest possessions aren't actually being accounted for properly.

All of this to say, the managers wanted to give us $150 for food and beverage. I cannot. Someone needs to get a hold of this hotel and its managers on what is expected for a 5-star hotel and for...