The Hotel Ithaca — Hotel in City of Ithaca

The hotel was neat and comfortable, the lower rating is for lack/failure to communicate. This hotel was lovely, however, I chose it for specific reasons. Access to an airport shuttle 24/7 (since we had red eye in and early morning out) was a key amenity I used when picking out hotel for this trip. The second amenity being a pool since my partner is a water person and would have enjoyed unwinding after our days of hiking in a pool.

I made the reservation on June 1. I called in to see if I could arrange the shuttle services since I had my tickets and was told I just needed to call in the week before to make sure my flights hadn't changed etc. I called in nearly every week to make sure that with COVID restrictions, we would be ok with our choice.

The week of our trip, I called in and was then told the shuttle wasn't running because of staffing issues, but if they had to pick up the flight crew we could probably get a ride with them. This had not been mentioned previously. Then I asked if their pool would be open with the recently changed COVID restrictions and they told me it was under repair for a leak that they couldn't find and they didn't think it would be open. Strike 2.

On the way in, we were able to get the shuttle with the flight crew. So we got there and checked in. The pool is for sure completely closed and we would have to wait to find out if we could get a shuttle back to the airport until the night before we left. I am a planner and this was really concerning to me to leave a detail like that (with a 6am flight) to the last minute.

The morning before our flight, we confirmed that we would be able to ride with the flight crew to the airport. The desk gal put it on the schedule and let us know to check in about it AGAIN before we went to bed for the night... once again, leaving everything to the last minute. Disconcerting. So my partner goes down as we are getting ready to turn in and asks about the shuttle... and they completely walked back what the gal in the morning had said. No shuttle, the flight crew takes a cab for that early of a flight. Great, so now we have to schedule and pay for a cab ride? That was supposed to be a perk of staying here was that that cost would be included in the hotel nightly fees (which were about $200/night). So I went down and explained that situation and the desk gal apologized and contacted the manager. They handled scheduling the cab to come pick us up, offered a $50 credit + $9 for the cab we would have to catch.

Ok, that seems fair.

We get up and go, take the cab out. Turns out the cab ride was $25, not $9. So we essentially received $30 credit for the hassle, stress, and lack of access to advertised amenities. Significantly less than the credit we were told we would receive.

I would stay there again, hopefully post COVID staffing issues they bounce back. My biggest aggravation was the LACK OF COMMUNICATION throughout the whole thing. I called in regularly to get information about what would be available considering COVID precautions were in play. There was ample opportunities for them to tell me what was actually available... and they just didn't. It is frustrating when you are a planner and are coming from 3,000 miles away to be constantly blindsided with missing information and scrambling to make new plans.

Beds were comfortable, room was clean, view was ok (looked straight into a parking garage though). Lack of communication, unclear access to amenities, made it a frustrating experience. There was no housekeeping service, which was ok, we just had to go ask for...

We called the morning of our arrivsl and informed the staff we would need a late check in. They confirmed our reservation and said no problem. We arrived at 9pm after 5 hours of driving and were told our reservation was "cancelled" when we arrived. They initially told us we would have to stay somewhere else. After asking them to pay for our stay in a similar star rating hotel in the same city, the manager said they would put us in a wing of the hotel they no longer use. She warned us that the room was outdated, and no longer being used for customers but she would open one up for us. We were so tired at this point that we did not bother to argue and just wanted to sleep. We waited 35 minutes for them to prepare the room. It was a 28 degree Fahrenheit night, and the entire wing had no/minimal heat. We were so exhausted from travelling we didn't bother objecting- figuring we could turn the rooms heat on. Once we got in the room though, the heat inside was not functional. We gave it 20 minutes to see if it would eventually warm up, but it did not. I went to the front desk and they offerred to move us to a different room in the same wing. Once again saying that the renovated main hotel was fully booked and our reservation was "cancelled". We got the keys for our 2nd room of the night and could not even finish walking down the hallway to get to it. We were completely overwhelmed with the smell of an obviously broken sewage pipe, which I can only guess was a consequence of the lack of heat in that unused wing. We returned to the front desk AGAIN. We were informed that the manager left for the night and the front desk supervisor said he would look into it. At this point we had tried been there for over an hour and a half. I decided to call priceline who we booked the room through. Priceline confirmed that our reservation was NEVER cancelled, and showed as active and ACCEPTED by the hotel... the rep explained this meant there was a room actively reserved for us there. The rep attempted to call and speak with a manager. The hotel told the rep there was not anyone available to take her call and they would call back when one was available. Before the rep was able to finish telling me this, the floor supervisor called us over. He informed us that he was just going to switch our room to a normal room in the renovated/usable part of the hotel. Just like that, in minutes, a room had suddenly become available.

Its worth mentioning that at no point had we recieved a refund for this reservation, nor were we notified before arrival that someone had cancelled our room. Additionally, we recieved confirmation emails from priceline a week after paying and booking, and a day before arriving at the hotel that the room reservation was all set.

It took us 3 rooms, and ove ran hour to get into our hotel room that had been paid for over a week prior to arriving. This place is an absolute disgrace to customer service and I highly advise that you stay somewhere else. Completely unprofessional and unwelcoming. I really can't stress enough how terrible this place is. We are typically really easy going people who are not easily upset, but this experience was an...

I recently helped organize a large conference at Hotel Ithaca and stayed in a room myself with 3 of my friends. The overall facility was ok, not great, but it worked well for hosting a large group. I do have a bit of a complaint about the room size/arrangement and management as that caused the largest disruption in our stay. First, the rooms are small to the point you’re forced to pile and climb over luggage if more than one person is staying there. Second, for some reason unknown to me the facility decided to push one of the beds all the way to the edge of the wall, and hang a large glass framed painting about 6 inches right above the bed. After this weekend, I now understand why most hotels try to add some room between the bed and the wall and minimize what is hanging over the bed.

In the middle of the night while we were all asleep, I woke up to a large crash that sounded like a dresser had fallen. I’m not sure how it happened, maybe my foot accidentally hit the painting given how low it was hanging, or in my sleep somehow hit the wall, but somehow this large painting had barely missed my leg and was now shattered on the floor with large shards of splintered wood and glass everywhere. I have to admit I was lucky it landed on the ground, and not my leg, because it could’ve caused much worse damage. Seeing what happened I moved the painting into a closet and picked up any large shards I could see to prevent my friends from stepping on it. In the morning, I went to the hotel lobby and mentioned the fallen painting and the attendant apologized and assured that it would be taken care of. Given my interaction with the hotel until this point, what followed was a major surprise to me.

Without any comment, the hotel billed our group $600 to fix what must be a seemingly priceless painting. We explained the situation again, mentioning to the manager my conversation with the attendant, but the manager rudely just wrote it off as us being drunk and “wrestling”. I would’ve assumed given the fact our room had no noise or complaints of any kind and the amount of business I helped bring to the hotel that I would get some leeway, but no, the manager just kept mentioning that we were probably drunk wrestling and broke the painting ourselves, and that there’s no other possible solution. As someone who was responsible for managing the composure and behavior of our group, I find that accusation to be extremely enraging and offensive, especially given the amount of business we brought the hotel complex.

All I have to say is, Hotel Ithaca is lucky that painting didn’t fall an inch closer or they’d have some medical bills to cover instead of just an enraged customer. Also I don’t know where management got their training, but I can tell you you’re not going to attract much business by writing off your customers as drunks whenever something happens. I’m glad the new Marriott is open downtown, because I for one will be taking my business there upon...