The Doyle Hotel — Hotel in Charlottesville

Long review. TL;DR - the points made by myself and others re: the service you receive is accurate, but once you finally get to your room (or whatever room they put you in) your stay should be mostly pleasant as the accomodations themselves are high quality and clean.

My partner and I were getting out of Richmond to try and treat ourselves to a luxurious shower and bath (this was during the water crisis). It sounds ridiculous, but when you've had dry taps and a strict conservation order that's left you unbathed for 3+ days, unexpectedly, you'd do a lot to get cleaned up. Baby wipes and water bottle baths weren't cutting it.

So I saw the photos of a room with a huge soaking tub and shower and made the reservation early in the morning without doing much research.

I get off work, we make the long drive, and I still never receive the check-in text they claimed I would. We arrive only to realize THERE IS NO FREE PARKING FOR CUSTOMERS. You can park in their lot across the street for $18 or you can pay for valet which was $25. (We found free parking at a place called Starr Hill Park down the street, but at our own risk. Left the car overnight and it was fine though).

So we lug our bags a few blocks down and get inside to check in at the desk. Surely they can simply check us in if we didn't get the text! No. The check in is somehow outsourced to some random 3rd party company or something so the person at the front desk has to message a different person to have them send me the text. We wait an extended period of time and I get the text. I check myself in on my phone finally and then, oops, THERE'S NO HEAT ON THE SECOND FLOOR WHERE WE HAD BOOKED OUR ROOM.

We had been making small talk with the desk clerk about how we were there to use the tub and the shower, so I assumed this would be taken into account when finding us a new room and did not say it when he said he would work to find us something comparable. I assumed it was implied. The clerk was unable to do this himself and another clerk/possible manager got involved. They finally find a room and make the adjustments (the whole process takes nearly 45 minutes). They say they don't have the same type of room available, but they found us one comparable. I made a remark like, "As long as it has the tub we're good." The clerks look at one another. The room does not have a tub. They said they were attempting to accommodate for space not amenities (this was also not done as the original suite we paid for was over 833sqft with a balcony and this room was 465sqft, no balcony--it could have been a shoebox for all I cared, I just wanted a tub).

But it was clear the first clerk was sick of dealing with the situation and I felt compelled to say it was fine because changing the room would have held us in the lifeless lobby in this awkward situation for another 30 minutes that I don't think any of us could bear. They claimed the price was the same (though this wasn't shown to me in any way) and I assumed the room size would be the same since that was what they seemed to be aiming for.

But, in fact, I received a massive downgrade but paid the same price even though the problem was that they initially allowed me to rent a room that wasn't available because of their own HVAC issues.

We were supposed to have a tub, a full suite, and a balcony, but we got none of those things and instead got the street view that the clerk seemed to believe was superior to anything else we could have wanted (it was just a view of a street, some train tracks, and some random rooftops and we of course kept the curtains shut anyway because it was the main drag of this part of the city and we aren't exhibitionists).

And also the WiFi didn't work and I wasn't about to contact the front desk about it.

The room itself was immaculately clean, just not what we wanted and paid for. Housekeeping obviously does a fantastic job, but the rest of this experience was awful. So obviously mismanaged by some obnoxious...

If you booked this hotel back when it was still the Quirk, cancel or modify your booking or you will be overcharged!!!

I booked my stay at this hotel for my son's wedding back when it was the Quirk. I was quoted an average rate of $301/night for my 5 night stay. Expensive, yes, but Quirk had a reputation as an excellent boutique, full-service hotel and this was a special occasion. Fast forward 11 months, and I receive a text from the Doyle Hotel to start my virtual check-in. Turns out the Quirk was sold in April 2024 to Blue Suede Hospitality group and rebranded as the Doyle Hotel in July 2024. It is now essentially an Airbnb disguised as a hotel. They employ a very low staffing model, and all customer service requests have to be handled virtually. There is no servicing of the rooms without an additional charge, and when a request is made, there is virtually no communication between the virtual CSRs and the on-site staff. Commensurate with this no-service model, their published room rates are now significantly lower than when I originally booked my reservation with the Quirk (which was essentially a different hotel) almost a year earlier. Unfortunately, the new Doyle model requires you pay the entire bill upfront in order to access your room, and I was unaware of the changes until after arrival. Once I became aware of the significantly decreased service experience, I requested that my room rate be adjusted to reflect the current published full price rate for the room I had reserved. This was $112/night average less than what I was billed, which totaled $560 over my five night stay. The "team" absolutely refused to make any adjustment in the exorbitant 50% overcharge, even after finally acknowledging that they were employing a completely different service model than when I booked with the Quirk. Before getting to that point, I had to make three separate calls to the customer service “team”, always being promised to get a call back within a certain time frame and always having to reach back out to them when I never received a call back. Their only concession was to provide me with one “complimentary” servicing of my room (a $60 value). I won't reiterate the complaints already mentioned by other reviewers (impersonal vibe, lower than expected cleanliness and lack of security) except to say that that was my experience as well.

I have been traveling for nearly 40 years, and this is the WORST customer service I have ever experienced from a business in the hospitality industry. I could have overlooked the total lack of service if I had that expectation at the time of booking AND I was paying a room rate that was adjusted for that, but it was a real slap in the face to not only be treated so shabbily but also be required to pay 50% above market rates for the privilege! This was just a variation on the classic bait and switch scam—I booked what was advertised as a full service, high end hotel and received an Airbnb instead. If I had been notified about the change in ownership and service model in advance of my stay and given an opportunity to modify or cancel my booking, or if I had been offered a reasonable refund for the difference in the Quirk rates and the Doyle rates, either would have resolved my issues. Other than our wedding party, I wonder how many other guests have been swindled in the course of this acquisition? Clearly, BSH Group has no interest in taking care of their customers or building brand loyalty and are mostly concerned with their short term return on investment. They're skimping on everything, and it shows. It's a shame, because the hotel is in a great location and has good bones. Even at the current rates, I wouldn't stay here again, though. I have had better and more personal service...

We would overall not recommend this hotel. The pros: staff was able to accommodate our request for an early check-in and the room was comfortable. The cons: we had significant issues with service that overshadowed the positive aspects of our stay. On the morning that we were checking out, we received via email an invoice that included a $160 charge for the hotel restaurant, Pink Grouse. That charge was incorrectly made to our room. We did not eat this meal, so either someone else charged it to our room or the waitstaff input the incorrect room number. When we asked the front desk to correct the charge, she advised that there was nothing she could do but that a supervisor would be in touch. We were pretty upset that there was apparently no one at the hotel who could correct the mistaken charge, but knew that we could dispute the charge once we got home. We then tried to request our car from the valet and learned we had been incorrectly charged again — this time for three nights of parking instead of two. Upon asking the front desk to correct that charge, she advised us that because the valet is run through a separate company, she could not help us dispute the incorrect charge. (Note: this hotel is valet only, there is no self park. We were not advised when we checked in that the valet was not affiliated with the hotel.). In any event, we then went to talk to the valet. He was very nice but told us that he could not help, and that we needed to go talk to the front desk. We told him that we already tried and had been sent to him. Ultimately, the valet made some calls and that incorrect charge was resolved. We do appreciate that he was able to resolve this problem for us when Quirk Hotel staff could not assist us. We were then waiting by the front of the hotel for the valet to bring around our vehicle. After a few minutes, the valet came to get us. He said our car was running and waiting for us on the curb. Indeed, there was a car running and waiting for us — but it was not our car! It turns out that the valet company had assigned two numbers to our keys and one of the numbers actually belonged to another hotel guest’s car. So when the valet went to retrieve “our” car, he actually retrieved another guest’s car. This was extremely concerning because if we had not been requesting our vehicle in good faith, we could have driven off with another guest’s car! At the end of the day, we probably could have overlooked any one of these issues if they had occurred in isolation. But being charged incorrectly on two separate occasions and then being brought the wrong car caused us a lot of stress.

No one from the hotel ended up calling us about the incorrect room charge, but we did get a second invoice via email showing the same $160 charge. We then called hotel and got patched through to finance. The woman we spoke to in finance ultimately agreed that it was an incorrect charge. I believe she determined that someone else had eaten at the hotel restaurant and the waitress had accidentally charged the meal to our room. Accidents happen and we do appreciate that this was ultimately corrected by someone in finance - but this was all just too much to deal with for a...