Aloft Denver Downtown — Hotel in Denver

We were here for a full week. For me, that is too long to stay in a "standard" room at this hotel. The aloft concept has pretty uniform rooms across the board other than adding a 2nd bed. The corners are a bit larger and furnished closer to most typical modern hotel rooms.

Pros: Pleasant front desk staff; they are very visible being located by the elevators so as noted in other reviews, they kind of start to recognize you and your needs.

Great Wi-Fi strength, easy log on without having to log into Marriott Bonvoy, etc.

Fun lobby that could provide some relaxed entertainment if you don't want to travel. OK to work through the workday here, though there is constant lo-fi music playing throughout.

Elimination of plastic water bottles, providing a carafe, and installation of a filtered water system? Great. Especially with the hot, room temperature, carbonated options alongside refrigerated. Denver has very tasty tap water.

Drybar toiletries in the shower (bottles they change out depending on how full they are) and bar soap at the sink.

Dinner and drinks available if you are tired and don't want to go anywhere.

Location for convention attendees or overnighters for an arts event or business.

Easy luggage storage process (if needed) and a tagged system to track/verify ownership of bags.

Cons: If this hotel is full, the elevator system seems to be having some software issues (why is it dinging on the service-facing side, not the hotel guest facing side?) so it was hard to know which elevator car to enter or whether it was going up or down. Elevators are also quite slow in a full environment (probably work for a 3 story hotel, agonizing in a 7 floor one).

No pool (I get it, downtown, etc.) but there is a workout room. Decent looking meeting/social event rooms as well, though they are located in the basement.

Expense of the rate. This hotel clearly marks up when a large convention is in town that will be taking up significant numbers of room inventory. It's not really a fancy hotel, it's kind of more of a "airport hotel" model in the actual room furnishings, layout, and decor.

Towels. We were in a king bed room, which in most hotels tends to mean 3 of the available linen set. At this hotel there were only two provided.

Noise in the room carries all over, so if you are traveling with someone, you will hear them get up to use the restroom or get ready for their day if they're on a different schedule than you. Hall noise could be carried as well.

Mixed: In-lobby coffee. No decaf that I saw, a large variety of milk and milk alternatives. Stayed hot and was out for most of the day after the hotel was a bit less occupied. In-room coffee was pretty good.

View. Our 3rd floor windows (2!) faced a historic downtown Denver building, the Denver Gas and Electric Building. It is well illuminated (interesting history read to look up) so you're going to be closing your blinds fully at night. No curtains, only black out roll down shades (not uncommon in most mid-service hotels these days).

Room comfort. Furnishings are functional and you can even make a bit of re-arranging, similar to Hilton's tru concept across the street. The dresser drawers and wardrobe are the back side of the bed headboard and face the sink area. No lamp other than a flickering bulb in the desktop lamp that you can't re-arrange to point in any different angles. The rest of the lighting is all overhead with mixed white saturation profiles (soft in the bedroom side, bright white over the sink and...

We were really excited for our stay. Unfortunately that was short lived. Because of this hotel and their "valet" (which is a 3rd party company i am now finding out) I am having to contest a parking ticket after they left our vehicle in a parking lot that must not have been theirs, for 30 minutes. I reached out to the hotel manager who seemed annoyed to even have to deal with this. I reached out the same day that I received my lovely and unexpected parking ticket. The general manager wasn't there but I was told she would reach out the following day. The following day was a holiday but was assured she would reach out. Never received a call. On July 6th, after I filled out the survey and after I complained to customer service, I got an email from the GM claiming she had tried to reach me by phone more than once. If she had, she was literally the only person who had troubles reaching me. She then went on to say that her valet guy would look into this and get it taken care of. It is now the 9th and the parking ticket gives you 14 days from the date that was printed (July 1st) to take contest the ticket or 30 days to get it paid. This was not my ticket to have to have attached to my name nor is it my ticket to pay. I reached out again this evening and was met with a response of an excuse of the holiday, which I am sure the parking authority could really care less about. When I asked to speak to the GM's immediate supervisor she told me to reach out to the customer service number. This location shouldn't be allowed to offer valet service if they can't properly park vehicles without getting tickets.

Beyond the parking ticket issue. The only parking options are the valet or finding a parkinglot to pay for on the street. Which we were unaware of at the time of booking. Lesson learned.

The room wasn't horrible but the bathroom door didn't shut all of the way so everything you did in the bathroom could be heard in surround sound in the rest of the room. The bar was nice, as was the bartender but she was inexperienced and we had to teach her how to make our drinks which were simple that most bars serve.

We were also told we could use a marriott gift card but online didn't allow us too so the customer service reps on the phone told me we would be contacted to give the gift card number over the phone. I ended up having an email conversation with the assistant manager who was kind and said they would go ahead and honor it to have the GM seem annoyed to even have to do this when we arrived. My husband who doesn't typically think people are being rude even made a comment about her attitude after we checked in.

If we wouldn't have already been running later than we wanted, we probably would have just looked for a different hotel to be quite honest. I wouldn't reccomend this hotel. The amenities are lacking, the gm treats people like they're and inconvenience and the valet gets you...

I stayed Sunday night and Wednesday night. The Sunday night experience was horrible. The Wednesday night experience was better but could not make up for the experience I had on Sunday night. First, I arrived at noon (prior to the 3pm check-in time) and my room was not ready. This was just fine with me because I understand that check-in is at 3pm. I asked to be called when my room was ready and NO ONE called me. I came back to the hotel at around 3:30 PM and was given a room. When I got upstairs, I found the cleaning lady in the room and she asked that I go downstairs for a different room because the room still wasn't clean and needed to be inspected by the supervisor. So, I went back downstairs and was given a different room. I went to the room and found that it hadn't been cleaned either. There were no sheets on the bed. I just don't understand how the system or Front Desk could be giving out rooms that are not clean yet. I had 3 pieces of luggage I had to haul up and down the elevator each time. I went back downstairs upset and asked for a different room. The employee proceeded to get on his walkie talkie radio to ask the cleaning staff for a clean room. No one responded so he asked that I go out and he would call me when a room was ready. I was upset and began to complain. After a few minutes, a member of the cleaning staff responded on the walkie talkie and I was given a third room. This time the room was clean and ready but my overall experience was terrible. I asked to speak to the supervisor or manager of the hotel but the employee informed me that none were there. I can't believe that SPG is associated to this hotel. My past experiences at other aLoft hotels have been pleasant but this was a terrible experience. The Front Desk tried to make it up with free breakfast vouchers but it still wasn't enough to make up for the 1) No call back when I requested a call be made when my room was ready, 2) Two rooms assigned to me that were not clean, and 3) No supervisor or manager on the premise to escalate the issue (I showed up during working hours so I expected someone to be there working). Add to that, my room had just 1 coat hanger and was right above the trash pickup. I was woken up at 3:30 AM to the sounds of the garbage truck pounding trash for several minutes. I'm sorry to even write this review because SPG has always been so good. I even had to call the SPG 800 number to put in a...