Skyline Lodge — Hotel in Highlands

My god, complete shame of a hotel. Last year I had traveled from Lexington Pride and met up with my mom afterwards for some hiking and adventuring. Im posting now as we are traveling again, and she told me she never got her money back for dog cleaning fees. We booked through Expedia, but it didn’t say on there or the website the dog policy, so we called the number listed on the Lodges website which got us to a third party booking company, who also didn’t have information, but said they would call the management. After waiting on hold, we were told bringing the dog was fine (this was recorded as we contacted the booking company to pull the log to support our claim). So when we checked in, we reminded the front desk lady about our dog as we assumed they had specific rooms, she told us our room was fine for the dog. Room was pretty terrible, shoddy paint, furniture, bed hard as a rock, minuscule tv with local channels only, and it SMELLED! Years of mildew and god knows what, but I’m not sure why they had such a (secret) hatred for dogs as my room smelled like a kennel. We ate dinner at the restaurant, nice patio and view, and the waitress was lovely. Food was ok, and our dog loved hanging out on the patio, waitress brought him water, we took good care of her for such nice service. So obviously we had not kept the dog a secret, and slept in the smelly room, one night only, grin and bear, right? Well next morning we are checking out, I’m loading luggage and dog in car while mom goes to lobby to get coffee. As she’s walking in, the front desk clerk, a gaunt balding dark haired man, confronts her, shrieking, “IS THAT YOUR DOG?!? DID YOU STAY HERE LAST NIGHT?!!” Obviously my mom was a bit taken aback, and tried to reason with this lunatic, but he was absolutely not having it. At this point I had made my way back into the lobby, and came into the situation late but could sense the tension. The histrionic clerk was yelling at my mom that he would charge her $300 cleaning fee for the dog, my mom laughed at him and said she would just do a chargeback which would cost them money. He shrilled back to “go ahead and try!!! Just try it!” I was none too thrilled by his tone towards my mother, so I told him to take it down a notch, and he hissed back that “you both can get the hell out of here or I’ll have you trespassed!” My mom laughed at his ridiculous behavior again and asked what was wrong with him, and he returned her question with a vulgar slur, so I returned the insult in kind, but I’m better at it than he, and he was FURIOUS! On our way out, he sprints from around the desk, wailing that he would have me arrested for verbal assault (which has to contain a physical threat, I never threatened him, just called him as rude a word as he used towards my mom, sorry not sorry). He followed us out to the parking lot, as any professional would, ranting and raving, and honestly behaving erratic enough that I felt his aggression might boil over, so I got mom into the car and left. Good on his word, we got a text alert from our card company that he had indeed charged us $200 before we had even left the parking lot. We tried on several occasions to get ahold of hotel management to let them make the situation right, after many many attempts, owner said he wouldn’t return our money because of me getting into it with front desk dude, no mention of his language or behavior, or the girl who checked us in the night before who saw our dog, or the restaurant staff who served us with our dog, which only indicates they condone and encourage this grift. I have traveled all over the country and world, stayed in hostels and 5 star hotels, I have NEVER experienced something so outrageous and surreal as this strange little man losing his mind over my wonderfully behaved sweet dog. Reading through the other comments on this review, it sounds like this may be a common scam with these folks. If you are a fan of the show Hotel Hell, and want to experience a “before” type of lodging, Skyline Lodge is the place for you, but I’d sleep in my car...

DO NOT STAY HERE! It is the illusion of grandeur- but in reality it is a horrible hotel that is overpriced! This was the last road trip we were taking with our dogs before having to put one of them down due to a brain tumor. I did tons of research online and this came up as one of the best dogs hotels in the region. ITS A LIE!

There is no where to walk your dog, except a small patch of grass next to the road, everywhere else on the property says to not let your dog walk there. Isn't this supposed to be a dog friendly hotel?

There is no refrigerator in the hotel, it has to be upon request, THIS IS 2024! and our dog had to have elderly food that HAS to be refrigerated, and pain medication that HAS to be refrigerated, but all of the refrigerators were busy so we had to keep them at the hotel front desk, but since they only have 1 person working, multiple times we went to go get her medication, and NO ONE WAS THERE! So we would have to put all of our plans on hold, wait for the front desk person to come back, get the medication, return the medication, then start our day. One of the nights, our elderly dog woke up in the middle of the night in pain, and needed her pain medication, that we could not access! That should be illegal!

On our first night, there was a surge that occurred after midnight, we lost all electricity, our cellphones couldn't charge, and we lost AC in the middle of Summer, and there is no staff working at night, so we had to lay in the sweaty heat until morning when staff finally arrived. For how much we pay, there should be staff accessible AT ALL TIMES.

There are NO views! It is a complete lie!! The only view is ONLY accessible by their restaurant- that is OVERPRICED steaks and wine- and if you don't want to eat at the restaurant, your only view is TREES! That is the biggest scam I have ever heard of! The restaurant is fully booked- very expensive, and has a beautiful porch area that overlooks the mountains (the ones in all of the photos) that are only accessible to the restaurant!! They could easily add steps from the hotel to the porch area, but no, they want you to spend EVEN MORE MONEY. As a guest you cannot tell if you are 4 feet from the ground or 400- you are just staring at trees. Its completely ridiculous that people who come here for 1 meal get better service and better views than people actually paying to stay here.

The Wifi doesn't work.

We got absolutely no sleep the entire time we were there, the walls are so thin you can hear EVERYTHING! The room was constantly so humid that our clothes and shoes felt soaking wet when we put them on and the windows have no screen so you cant even open them for some fresh air! Also- the bathroom always locks itself from the wall-guard and we were constantly having to figure out how to unlock it from the outside to open our bathroom!

It feels to me that they care more about maximizing profit than they do about the people who actually stay here or their workers. There should be more than 1 person working the front desk at all times, they are being overworked! There should be a staff person on call at all hours! You are in the middle of nowhere- I cut my foot open and the closest grocery store was 20 minutes away- that's ridiculous- there was no one a the front desk so we had to make that drive for Band-Aids!

Online the photos show a modern beautiful hotel, but its actually a piece of crap motel that charges $300 a night. Except I've stayed in motels better than this since they at least had 24/7 service! It feels that the owner is a slum lord and no one should support this...

I have really mixed feelings about the Skyline Lodge. I really want to rave about this place, but unfortunately the lack of communication from the staff and errors in our billing make me unable. On the plus side, the rooms are really nice (they're not "Four Star Hotel" nice, but they're quite stylish and cozy) and the location and facility is great. The problem is that we had some issues that we've been completely unable to resolve in no small part because it is impossible to talk to a human on the phone and messages are categorically not returned. More detail follows.

The first issue is that we made a mistake with our dates. We understood that there is a strict cancellation/rescheduling policy, so we called right away - and called. And called. And called. When we finally got through to someone (the ONLY time I was able to connect via phone), I explained the situation and the staff member offered to change our dates for us. I was delighted! I asked if there would be any additional fees and she put me on hold. Then came back and told me the dates had been changed but unfortunately we would be in a "less premium" room. No problem! We were happy they could make this accommodation. A few hours later, however, our credit card was charged an additional $130+. We could not reach anyone to get an explanation for why.

Once at the hotel we had a great stay (we checked in late and a key was left out for us), but only found staff to talk to at checkout. We asked about the charge and were assured that there were "no additional charges for the date/room change" and that fee would be refunded. It was, but then there was another charge assessed - again without explanation. We called over and over again to find out what was going on. Still haven't spoken with anyone. It may be that we need to open a dispute with our credit card?

Lastly, I made the mistake of forgetting a small personal item at the hotel. I also called for several days enquiring about this but have not had a single call returned nor could I reach anyone. I've now written that off.

Ultimately, this little hotel that is trying to win our favor and label itself as 4-star really needs to work on their customer service and communication if it wants to earn that status. I don't know if it is lack of staffing or lack of staff training, but either way this aspect of the experience was disappointing. If the Skyline Lodge can rectify this, and address our needs specifically, I would not hesitate to recommend (and return to!) this great little establishment. But for now I can only warn other would-be guests: Make sure that when you're ready to book, you're ready to be completely self-sufficient in terms of your needs for your stay. Don't expect to have a helpful staff at the ready to ensure things...