21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati — Hotel in Cincinnati

I recently returned to Cincinnati to attend the funeral of my recently departed cousin. I needed to find a place to stay and looked for a hotel that would meet my exacting standards. I narrowed my search to two properties and relied on Condé Nast Traveler and Trip Advisor to confirm my selection. When I arrived, I was greeted by a noxious odor in the lobby - not a great start but as I wasn’t sleeping in the lobby, I didn’t let it sway me too terribly. Still, not exactly the best first impression. I had a lovely interaction with the front desk clerk and set off for my room. I arrived to find my room clean but shabby. Exhausted, I felt onto my bed. Surely this would be worth the $350 a night rate. Sadly, the bed had seen better days. It was not firm or plush but something akin to a bag of loose springs. It’s hard to believe this is what passes for luxury even in Cincinnati.

The first 48 hours were fine and had my stay merely been underwhelming, I would have taken the hit and moved on but what happened on the third and final night of my stay left me feeling absolutely astonished that anyone stays at this property.

On Thursday, I returned to my room to try and get an early start to my sleep as I had an early flight. I was aware of the din of EDM (electronic dance music) as I closed my eyes to sleep. After three hours of non stop excessive bass, I finally called down to front desk and was informed that two doors down was a dance club that would be playing music until 2 AM. The clerk told me “I’ve got you” and promised to send ear plugs up to my room. I waited for another hour for ear plugs that never arrived. I found my own noise canceling head phones which did nothing to drown out the bass. At 2 AM, the music did end but by this point I was so consumed by anxiety and lack of sleep - there was no sleep to be had.

I left the hotel at 5 AM and spoke to the same front desk clerk I had spoken with hours earlier. I saw the look register on his face when he realized he had never sent the ear plugs up. I explained how disappointed I was by my experience and I was barely offered an apology. I explained that my noise canceling headphones hadn’t stopped the noise from the club and he launched into a lengthy dissertation about how noise canceling headphones aren’t meant to drown out all noise. He told me he was an “audiophile” and had circumstances been different I might have been enlightened but the fact remains he was missing the point. I asked him who I would need to speak with to get some sort of compensation for my experience and he feigned interest and assured me he would follow up while pretending to write my concern down on a post it.

I asked what the balance was on my folio and he erroneously informed me that my credit covered my expenses. He then told me he was emailing my folio - a folio that to date I have yet to receive. No one at the hotel has reached out to me as promised to address my concerns in any manner save this survey.

This hotel has much to learn about providing high quality customer service let alone the very bare minimum expectation which was simply a quiet and comfortable place to get a safe night of sleep.

I don’t know how anyone sleeps in this property when the club is open next door. Coming from the NYC area I know that quiet hotels can exist even next door to nightclubs. When the proprietors decide to invest in a desperately needed upgrade to this property I implore you to invest in better windows. At least for the sake of future guests, as I for one will not make the same mistake twice. For anyone considering this property, I would...

Wife and I had a night away from our kids, we decided to try out 21c. We got a package that came with an included 100$ voucher for the attached restaurant, and our room was supposed to have a bottle of champagne waiting for us. When we arrived the woman at the front desk asked us 3 times if we had been there before during check in, and that was it. She did not inform us of how to use our 100$ voucher, but she did inform us that the champagne was not in our room yet. Champagne showed up much later, and when it arrived it was a 10$ bottle of garbage that I could not even stomach and we left unfinished. We got ready for our dinner reservation and learned that our bathroom light was out, so my wife had to get ready next to the bed. The restaurant was nice, our waiter was very friendly and very professional. He asked us if we wanted to charge the meal to our room, which we did as we knew we had a 100$ credit for the restaurant and assumed that it would be applied to our meal. Fast forward to the next morning, I go to take a shower and the showers pressure is that of a fire hose, and was so incredibly strong that my wife did not want to take a shower.

We go to checkout and I ask the woman at the front desk (different woman from the previous night) to make sure our 100$ credit was applied to our dinner, she told me that she could not do that and told me I was supposed to tell the restaurant that I had a voucher. I told her that nobody informed us of this and we charged the room. She told me that she could not reverse any charges. I asked why and she just kinda looked at me and handed me a business card for their "reservations manager". Told me that this woman probably couldn't do anything about it either because I was supposed to hand them a voucher.

So I call that number.. I get a different woman, not the one on the card. This woman tells me that the woman I need to talk to is not in during the weekend, and that she would transfer me to her voicemail and she'd be in on Monday (we stayed on a saturday night, and this was Sunday morning). I leave a voicemail detailing our experience..

Monday comes and goes, I receive no calls back.

Tuesday comes and I call again, goes straight to voicemail this time. I call again, voicemail again. Leave a second message.

At this point, I am livid.

UPDATE;

I received a phone call within 45 minutes of this review from a different department, they apologized for the entire experience and assured me there would be an internal investigation into the staff I mentioned. They also refunded me the entirety of the price of the hotel, minus the restaurant. I appreciated her swift response as she did not hear the voicemails I left, but was responding entirely based off of the review I had left through their survey. She told me I should have absolutely received a phone call from SOMEBODY within this time, and that it was unacceptable despite their reservations manager being out sick currently (the woman who I had been told I needed to contact) there were multiple people that could have resolved this issue for me. Thank you Blen for the swift response from your department. Every other department needs to get their...

The week before I stayed at a Hotel around the corner from 21c and it was very nice and clean but this week I decided to splurge a little and booked 21c which was almost twice as expensive. I was looking forward to the rooftop but upon checking it we found out it closed for the season 3 days before. They gave us a room on the 6th floor. Took the elevator up (it waswicked fast) but when we got to the floor you could see the place was in need of some updates like carpet and paint. The room was the same but smelled a little funny almost like it was a smoking room. After getting ready to go out it started to smell a little more like sewer in the room but didn't think too much about it so we left and went to dinner, concert and hit a couple bars on the way back. When we opened the door to the room the smell was really bad. Definitely sewer gas. I called the front desk and they said they could move us to a new room and would send up security with new keys. When security got there I asked her what she thought. She took a step in the door and said that it smell really bad like rotten eggs. She was really nice and even went back down and grabbed a luggage cart for us. We got to the new room on the 4th floor and it was about the same but without the sewer smell. The bathroom in this room was bad. The drain plug and linkage was pulled out and just laying in the tub, one of the soap bottles was just sitting on the edge and not attached to the wall like the others but not that big of a deal however the lack of water pressure made it almost impossible to take a shower and the toilet well it was more like a rocking chair. I just have to say that I don't understand why there are empty mini bar refrigerator that are working and an ice bucket and glasses when there is no ice or vending machine. 🤔 You can stay in a cheap roadside hotel and get a frig, vending machines and a pool. The next morning my friend realized they left their medication in the other room so we call the front desk and they said they would send someone up to get it and bring it to us. We waited and waited but we really need to leave out for the day so we called them back and the said oh we'll send some one uu now. My friend walked up to the old room to meet them but the cleaning lady came to the new room. She didn't speak English so i couldn't explain what was going on but that's not on her. We finally got it resolved and left for the day. With all that going on we didn't really have time to check out the "museum" part of the hotel mostly because we really just didn't want to be there. I didn't want to spend any more of my birthday dealing with it. All and all not a great stay. I hope Benson Boone had a better experience than us. He put on a great concert. I would suggest the Hampton a block over. It was way nicer, cheaper and with the option for no contact check-in and digital keys. Oh and the Google Chrome didn't work right on the TV(no pass work to connect to it) and the front desk didn't know how to do it. Every place should have...