Winslow's Bungalows - Key West Historic Inns — Hotel in Key West

Beware: this is not a 4-star hotel. Rude, unaccommodating staff and towels are never available.

If you're in the service industry and all you do is apologize for your shortcomings and your lack of ability to handle even the most basic requests, you are the problem. Virtually every interaction with the staff - including managers - ended with them apologizing for their inability to handle even the most basic requests. Among them:

Check-In Our room was upstairs across the street on a side road. We were handed a map and instructed to drag our luggage across the gravel drive, out to the main road, and down the side road. As it turns out, we actually could have walked through the property to get to our room, which would have been quicker and easier. Someone should walk guests to their room upon check-in. That didn't happen.

Pool Towels There are three small-ish pools at this property. What doesn't exist is an adequate number of pool towels for guests. We stayed for a week and we saw just five pool towels available at one of the pools exactly once. When we inquired about getting towels, we were told they were all in the wash. All of them. This issue plagued the property for the entire week. When did see them we grabbed them and stockpiled them in our room so we could enjoy this basic amenity. Others did the same.

Bath Towels Upon check-in, we requested that housekeeping provide two additional bath towels for the room for the duration of our stay. This did not happen. We had to call multiple times each day to get the towels we were assured would be in our room. On one occasion it took two hours and several calls for them to be delivered, making us late for a dinner reservation. Again, the staff said all the towels were in the wash. Then we were told the property had only one working washing machine. I looked up older reviews and the same was reported months ago. Advice to management: either get your washing machines fixed, replace them with better machines, or send someone out to the local laundromat.

Their continental breakfast game is also weak. Here's what we found on a daily basis: Lukewarm coffee Rotten bananas Stale cereal

Check-Out As IHG members, we requested a late check-out at 2:00 pm (a standard benefit offered by IHG for its loyalty club members). They outright refused, saying noon was the latest they could offer. After multiple interactions, the property manager finally agreed to honor our request. But he dug in and would not honor it for the friends we were traveling with. A flat "no" was the only response.

Communication With Staff On multiple occasions I received rude, sassy and snarky replies from staff. An all-caps response to our initial late check-out request (from Lynn); a sassy reply (from E.J.) when I had to request towels for the thousandth time "All resorts have challenges and obstacles..." and "we are doing our due diligence in keep up with our towels... we only have 1 working washer and dryer at the moment... Have a lovely day..."

Pools We weren't able to use the small pool that was situated adjacent to our rooms because it was routinely filled with leaves and branches. Every single time we had to walk across the property to use the main pool instead.

Accommodations The room we were in had no closet. Nowhere to hang a shirt or a dress. Two of the four drawers under the bed were not usable because they were filled with a safe and safety equipment. There was nowhere to unpack, so we spent the week living out of suitcases. Also: broken and missing tiles on the bathroom floor and a toilet paper holder that was falling off the wall. The housekeeping staff didn't replace the nearly empty toilet paper roll. When we requested more, they brought two rolls. Then left another three rolls in the room the next day. It felt obnoxious.

They can't even get the basic stuff right, and they have no real amenities to speak of. Stay elsewhere.

Two stars because the A/C worked and the...

After looking through the hotel's website and the photos they've provided to show the rooms, the "outdoor pool with bar service", and what appeared to be inviting amenities- I can confidently say it's an absolute scam.

1. I've seen dozens of other reviews describing how unpleasant/unhelpful their hotel staff is. That could not be more accurate. Before I left for this trip, I called the hotel to see if they had a few things (blow-dryer, towels, etc.) and I was told on the phone that 'literally, all I'd need to bring were my clothes. They had everything else imaginable on site.' I felt immediately at ease about potentially forgetting any last-minute toiletries. There's a small card with a lengthy list of "amenities" they provide that sits in the room; We realized we didn't have any toothpaste our first day - We walked downstairs and were told "Yeah, no. We don't have that. There's a CVS across the street." We asked about pool towels. Again, not available/not replenished/difficult to get. If you market your hotel as having three pools, why wouldn't pool towels be automatically put in the rooms before your arrival? Why was that something we had to hunt down, on several occasions? I peeped a few hotel guests using their bath towels as substitutes, because they as well couldn't find any available pool towels. This brings me to the actual pools-

2. There are three pools. They're all relatively small, so please don't let the number of available pools fool you. The main one, closest to the check-in area, is the only one that is routinely kept clean. The other two pools were constantly littered with legitimate tree branches, leaves, debris, etc.

3. I didn't realize how much these rooms actually went for, because we used a lot of credit card points to book this trip. I cannot stress this enough - You will pay a heaping sum of money, and you will not feel like you've received service that matches the value they're claiming to have. I cannot fathom the reality of $800-$900 a night for the service we received. We booked a room with a king bed & a balcony - I read in other reviews that most people didn't have any seating areas. There were too small chairs in our rooms, but the actual size of the room is incredibly small. You cannot comfortably stay in a room this size if you're planning a week-long trip here.

4. It's in a great area as far as proximity to everything you'll likely want to see/do while you're there. That's why this gets 2 stars for me. The location is truly its only saving grace. After my own experience, I will gladly stay an additional mile outside of this area to gain access to a cleaner and more accommodating hotel.

5. This is not a four-star hotel. It's not a three-star hotel. By any means. They found an immaculate photographer to catfish the hell out of us via their website. Kudos to whoever did the photography for this hotel, because you could not have fooled us more. Truly remarkable.

6. The bathrooms are extremely small (which makes sense since the actual bedrooms are small), and they're not updated/clean. It's a tough sell. The photographs on their website make their bathrooms appear so charming & modern, but this isn't the case. It's dirty. The tile is old and grimy. I read other reviews about the air conditioners on site having black mold, not being clean, etc. It's completely accurate. When we were packing up on our fourth day, there were ants crawling from out of our sink and around the bathroom doorway. We didn't have any food near the bathroom- There was nothing to explain the cause of ants besides poorly kept conditions in that bathroom.

PLEASE- Before you book, PLEASE look at other options. Especially if you're planning on spending a lot of money/most of your time at this hotel. There are tons of better...

2 night stay. We checked in around 6pm. Staff were very friendly and introduced us to the property and let us get settled in. We did on site parking, it's $21/day including tax and there were plenty of spots, since there are multiple parking lots.

All Kimpton properties in Key West are converted individual houses and units that are connected via a gated community. This is the largest Kimpton property in Key West. There is a main gated area that comprises of the reception and nearby pool, which is the least private, and there is a bar/dining area with another nearby pool. Then, across the street, there is another more secluded but distant area with a pool, which is where we stayed.

Each room comes with an outdoor area with seating and table, though the privacy varies. For us, since we stayed in the secluded area, and at the farthest unit behind a gate, we had a lot of privacy.

The rooms themselves were lovely. Very modern and chic, spacious, large bathrooms (had space for a wooden bench). The turkish robes were very comfortable. The floors are wooden, so footsteps can be heard easily. We used the provided yoga mat to soften our footsteps.

We didn't hear much noise from the other unit - walls were reasonably thick.

Although we did like the more private experience, the distance from the reception was a bit of an inconvenience. The other unique thing is that there are no staff on site after 9pm. After this time, they have a text service to help with any questions or issues. One thing that was unclear - where to get ice. A staff member texted that there is an ice machine near the bar, but the bar area had lighting completely turned off, and the ice machine was nowhere to be found.

We didn't really have any issues and didn't require any extra toiletries, but I can see this being a potential issue for people who are night owls that are staying longer than 2 nights.

Breakfast is 8-10am, a staff member hands you a to-go bag with your order and you can eat at the seating around the bar. I'd say it's a pretty decent breakfast selection.

They have 3 bikes for rent (included in the daily amenity fee), which is a strange number since most of the guests come in couples. We came when 2 bikes were already rented out, so had to pay out of pocket (about $9) for the staff to call another company to bring us an extra bike from Webike. The Kimpton bike was a nice roadie bike, but the extra bike from the external company was terrible. I won't go into that much since it's not really on the Kimpton staff, but they should really work with a different company.

There's also snorkeling gear for rent (included in the daily amenity fee). They sanitize them thoroughly and provide a mesh bag for you to carry them and your other belongings.

The location is a few blocks from Duval, very convenient, but also in a more quiet area. There are no roosters in our area, thankfully, so you won't be waking up to rooster calls.

We paid with a free night (from Chase IHG) as well as points for the 2nd night. It would've been around $300-350 a night. Given that price, I would at least expect 24 hour on site staff and more on site bike availability (which is technically extra, as it's part of the amenity fee).

Another small nit is the ridiculous number of gates to open when walking to our room from the reception, and they all seem to open in inconsistent directions. The flow of the hotel can be well improved if they just got rid of the gates, especially since none of them required key access.

Overall though, we really liked this property and would consider staying again in our next trip...