The Westin Dallas Downtown — Hotel in Dallas

Destined to have a bad time at the Westin: We booked a suite for one night with a king bed. When we first arrived the staff checked us in promptly but didnt offer much more or recommendations on places to eat or welcome us to their city. Beautiful lobby and great views…however we wanted to get a quick bite to eat and a drink before going to the room and thought we’d go to their bar. Zero service..as in NO ONE was there. We went downstairs to NOLA. Great food but they upcharged us (they did not give us happy hour pricing on food when it was happy hour and overheard a staff member say they knew it was happy hour and just didnt tell us so they could charge the full amount). After freshening up in the room and an hour later STILL no one at their lobby bar. We woke up at 7 am and requested room service…I wanted the lox bagel and asked if an everything bagel was an option. The staff member had no idea because “the restaurant is separate and they dont have a phone” so it seemed out of their way to go and find that out. I also requested more water bottles. They had no problem HAND delivering water bottles to our door but our food in a paper bag HAD to be picked up downstairs.. I understand COVID but i think a contactless delivery minimizes that more than walking downstairs and picking up the food..what a joke. Room. No service. THEN when I asked for coffee the cafe worker was nowhere to be seen (at 7 am). We come down around 11:00 to check out and I still want coffee. I go to the grill and vine and you would have thought it was fort knox. I pushed open the door to see no hostess and search around for a staff member. They direct me to the coffee bar in the restaurant…ZERO COFFEE in the pot. And then a front desk member walks over and asks if I need help as if I wasnt allowed to be in there after having to push the door open and figure things out for myself? Search for coffee continues…I go back to the cafe downstairs and there is STILL no cafe worker. While there is a coffee machine in the room..after a long night of partying, waking up early, and being hungover on vacation the last thing I want to do is make my own coffee in a machine I dont know how to work. I paid to be serviced ESPECIALLY at a highly rated place like this. We had decided to stay an extra night and they told us it was a $100 upcharge for the night relative to the night we had booked. Needless to say, we checked out and are sleeping comfortably at a different hotel tonight. Ill finish with the room: Great bed. Good view. AMAZING shower with a waterfall head and a sprayer head with a built in seat. Nice robe. Wish there had been lotion available…first hotel Ive been to in a while that didnt have lotion or face wash. I mean were staying in a suite..I would have expected something a little extra. Nice lounge indoor pool with an awesome view of the skyline..only open until 10 so no late night swims but whatever. Overall 3/5 because the room was worth it but the issues listed above ruined my experience to say the least. Dear Westin Downtown Dallas, Ill wave to you...

I am truly disappointed in the initial service of The Westin Downtown based on popularity as well as prestige reputation. Initially when my girlfriend and I pulled up in our Uber the bellhop at the door literally made eye contact with me thru the window and watched us get out of the car carrying our own bags in out of the trunk (it’s cold so I assumed he just didn’t feel like coming outside). But what actually bothered me once we were inside is that he offered absolutely no direction towards front desk for check in, we were 5ft away from him and obviously invisible to the naked eye. (Guess he assumed we were local) Stood there for a few mins to determine where the front lobby was then took the escalator.

Once we got to the front desk we were assisted by a young lady who clearly has no customer service background. From the phone call my girlfriend made less than 2 weeks ago the staff made her aware that there would be a hold on a credit card during the stay and you would be charged the nightly rates etc. upon check out, which sounds normal. This young lady insisted that we pay everything including nightly rate, amenities and (possibility of room service?) upfront and had no explanation as to why. At bare minimum have some justification as to why policy changed today? How?.. We stood there in conversation with her over 20mins and we are still unclear. Also within this time we have zero clue about any amenities, pool, breakfast, coffee, WiFi, gym etc. Her focus was for us to pay her and move on, which we did. It is my birthday today and we came here to Dallas to get away from home and enjoy ourselves, now we don’t want to order the room service which we have apparently already paid for or associate with any of The Westin unfriendly staff. Never Again will we or anyone we know visit this property!

Things to train your staff on:

Greet guest at the door, make them feel welcome and excited to stay on your property.

At minimal offer direction to front desk

Be accommodating at the front desk (the guest is not always right) but atleast offer explanation on previous recent encounters with staff.

If someone hands your staff their ID over 3 times and their birthday is the next day, wish them a happy birthday. Especially if you know there is confusion and possibility of unfriendly staff.

Let the guest know about amenities in the hotel, gym pool WiFi restaurants breakfast and coffee.

I am truly disappointed with this experience and hate that I have to stay here for the next 3 days not knowing my way around or what’s available. Nightmare on Main Street I will call this weekend. I will say however the hotel is very clean but the guest experience is the absolute...

We got there and had been upgraded to very lovely rooms. The beds were comfortable and it was quiet. When we went to check out there was a $35 dollar charge from the restaurant, which we did not make. The front desk person removed the charge after a quick check with the manager. If this was the end of things I would have given this place a glowing 5 star review, however my friend forgot her i-pad in one of the rooms. By the time we noticed we were in a place with bad cell signal so we were not able to call until the next morning. I called the hotel and was transferred to loss prevention vm. I left a message. When I checked my email I saw that I'd gotten another email from the Westin with a new version of my folio. Not only did the put the $35 charge back on they had charged me for another night in my room. Since no one had called me back in regards to the i-pad and I had the billing issues we stopped back at the hotel when we got back to Dallas just after lunch. The front desk lady, Pamela, told me she didn't have any information on the i-pad, and she would talk to cleaning, lost and found, and security. She did fix the billing issues and wrote down all my phone number, name, and room number on a post-it note. She told me they would call me back by 3 pm before she left for the day and she would brief the next person on the desk. By 4 pm we hadn't heard anything so we walked back over. The guy who'd taken over the desk had no idea what I was talking about. He wanted to get all my information but I pointed to the post-it note that was on the desk from the last lady since it had everything they needed. He said he would call me in a couple hours. After dinner, maybe around 7pm I hadn't heard anything so we called. They said they were still checking and they would call tomorrow. At 10 am we called and they said the first lady I talked to would call me back as soon as she got out of a meeting. I told them I very much doubted that but asked they try to call before 2 pm as that's when our flight out of Dallas was. At around 6 pm I finally got a call from Stephen from security. He said he personally checked one of the rooms and he didn't find the i-pad. Funny story, he'd checked the wrong room. He said he'd call me back after looking in the room the i-pad was left in. He did actually call me back 30 min later still without having found the i-pad. I thanked him for calling me back and checking. At this point it's been almost 2 whole days that it's taken anyone to call me back and they'd rented out the room before checking for the i-pad. Yes it's our mistake for having left it, but how was it so hard to send someone to look. We spent 2 days dealing with this. It really put a damper on...