City Suites Hotel — Hotel in Lake View Township

My experience with this hotel was poor. I visited the first week in December so there was no excuse for "busy" season for it's sad state. I'll start with the positives even though they do not outweigh the negatives for me.

Positively the location was spectacular. I loved being so close to the train and all of the great restaurants. I had top floor corner room with a very pretty view of the street an train station. The updates to the rooms were nice and it was fairly large. There were plenty of accessible plug ins and lights, and the bathroom shower was great!

As for the negatives; they're are all deal-breakers for me and I will NOT be returning to City Suites for another stay and have warned all of my friends against doing so as well.

The room was disgusting. It was absolutely dirty. I wish Google let you post pictures because I took many. The smell was awful. It was mildewy and damp in my room. It was also VERY warm even after I turned the little heater off. The windows were all also nailed shut so I had to leave my room and hope for the best. I requested a fan, that they brought me, but it was in such a sorry shape I was reluctant to take it. It was banged up, covered in paint and dust. I put it in the bathroom, which didn't have a vent and was the obvious culprit of the damp.

I also checked the bed and found blood on a pillow. I was relieved in some ways because my greatest fear was that the black spot under the sheet was a bed-bug. There were no bugs, thank the lord, but the blood stain was very obvious so I shed the pillow of its cover and threw it on the floor so they would notice it and toss it. The surfaces of the room were very dusty, and one spot was even sticky.

My bathroom was covered in hair, long blond strands that stuck to everything, as well as short cuts as if a man had recently shaved. The glasses on my sink were also covered in hair and had finger spots on them. I dared not drink from them, but I did pull the papers off and toss them in the little trash and I also put some water in them to show that they were dirty.

Two of the hangers in my room were broken, and had been hastily re-glued to LOOK okay, but did not hold my coat or shirts, as they quickly broke again. The floor also had a great deal of white fuzz on it, which I thought may be from an old sweater or a dog. I did not look closely because I was afraid of getting on the floor at this point. I went down to the front desk and asked them to quickly wipe everything down again in my room while I was away at dinner. The young man at the desk said sure.

I came back and nothing was done, I thought that I would just wait until morning to complain as it was late. That night I heard doors slamming that shook the whole walls. Even though I was on the top floor the ceiling sounded creaky as if someone were walking back and forth on it. There was also this terrible high-pitched screech that I found out was the radiator. The toilet also constantly ran.

The next morning I put the "please clean my room" sign up, and went down and I asked the front desk to make certain that my room was cleaned. The woman at the desk said that it would be. That night, however I came back to my room and it was worse than I imagined. They had pulled the papers from the cups out of the trash and put them back on the same dirty cups in my sink, which hadn't been cleaned for there was still beard hair! The bloody pillow was also refitted and placed on the bed. The fuzz was still all over the floor and the hangers had been rehung.

I was so embarrassed and grossed out and so ready to leave Chicago that I went back down to the front desk but there was nobody there. If I had had the money I wouldn't have stayed that second night and just gone somewhere else. I couldn't believe that they didn't do any proper cleaning at all and had just put everything back where it belonged rather than replacing it! I was loath to sleep in the bed so I threw all of the pillows to the floor, shed the bed of it's comforter and slept almost hovering...

update 6/19: the hotel reimbursed me for my entire stay and took actions to have room inspected by pest control. I appreciated the communication of the hotel owner/staff after listening more carefully to my experience.

My stay was from 5/22 - 5/28 and I had to check out early because we found bed bugs. This hotel is not clean, the price is not worth it. I had been itchy and scratching parts of my body since my second night at this dirty hotel. Originally, I suspected is irritation to their body wash because I’m extremely sensitive to scented products. I went to buy a new body wash from the Target down the street, but the itchiness continued. On my fourth day there I woke up with bites all over my left arm and leg. I was in town for a festival and was in a hurry to get to my itinerary the thought of it being bed bugs didn’t cross my mind until one of my friends called it and said the huge red bumps couldn’t possibly from skin irritation or an allergic reaction. I immediately called the hotel on Sunday (05/26) and told them I suspected there were bugs in my room and if they could take a look. The front desk told me they would send housekeeping and check for bugs. I briefly returned to the hotel around 4pm and as I was going up the elevator the front desk staff asked if I was from 402 and told me housekeeping had looked but didn’t find anything. I showed them my arm and tried to gaslight me into saying it was probably just an allergic reaction. I brushed everything off after that because I was in town to have fun and didn’t want to deal with the consequences at the moment. When I eventually returned to the hotel for the night, I started looking for bed bugs myself. I looked for about an hour under the sheets, in the headboard, under the mattress, in the mattress crevices. Nothing yet. I then went to look on the furniture in the other part of the room and nothing. I thought I wasn’t going to find anything, until I found exoskeletons in the carpet by the bed (see photos) Eventually I looked in the corner under the bed skirt and found the colony. See the video I attached. I immediately knew I had to leave. I went to the front desk and told them what I found. The young man at the front was so unapologetic, he offered to move me to another room, but after being told there were no bed bugs and then finding them, I just wanted to leave.

I booked my room through a third party and started the process of getting my money back for all of this. I had to throw away so many of my things because they were all close to where I found the bugs and I didn’t want to bring an infestation to another hotel and my own home. My whole cosmetic bag, gone. About 30 pieces of clothing, gone. The hotel offered a lousy $160 “inconvenience fee” refund, but that doesn’t even cover the cost of one night in this dirty place.

If after reading this you decide to stay here, check your room closely and don’t let them put you in room 402!!! Look everywhere!!! I’m not a picky person and typically don’t knit pick many things, but this place is not as clean as everyone claims.

I hated being lied to and gaslit by hotel staff. My original six night stay was not cheap at all, and to have this all happen just doesn’t sit well with me. The hotel doesn’t want to refund my whole stay because I had a non-refundable booking. This is a whole other can of worms….

Don’t stay here, spend your money somewhere else and make sure it’s not one of their sister...

I booked at City Suites Chicago for two nights with 4 friends in a double room for a total of $450. The bare bones of this stay worked in the sense that we did not detect any pests during our stay and the beds were comfortable. Additionally, this place is conveniently located right next to the train stop at Belmont and was near the events we had planned for our trip. The actual hospitality, cleanliness, and atmosphere dampened my experience here.

Immediately upon entry to our room, I checked the cleanliness of the space. There were smears and specks on the bathroom mirror, bits of trash under both beds (and an entire sock under one of them), a slew of brown stains that look like someone spilled a drink all over the wall by the sofa, plus crumbs & brown stains in the drawers. As far as common space goes, the stairwell really needs to be vacuumed and the communal microwave in the lobby was dirty. I also had some security concerns since we could see light from the lobby coming through the a bole in the doorway by the latch on our door, making the door secure only when the deadbolt was in use (see photo).

As far as hospitality goes, there was 1/8 (as a generous estimate) of a roll of toilet paper in the restroom upon our arrival with no spare or backup to be found. I understand wanting to conserve resources, but the least they could have done is leave a spare roll. The room also lacked what seem like basic hotel amenities at this point, like a place to easily charge more than one device near the beds. Outlets were plentiful, but located sporadically around the room.

Several people in my group wanted to refill our water bottles at the end of the day on our first day in the hotel. I went downstairs to the tank of ice water that had been present during the day and found it empty. I asked at the desk if I could get more water and was told no because "they don't bring us jugs anymore"? Whatever that means? I had to make a trip down the street to purchase bottles of water. The next morning, the same tank of water was present and filled, so they must be getting water from somewhere.

On the second day, we returned to the hotel together and headed to our room. Both room card keys wouldn't work at the door. We had to check with the desk staff and they re-added our door key code to our cards with a machine without explanation or apology. We weren't told what had happened, nor had we been told in advance that we would have to bring our keycards back each day to have our door code re-added if that was supposed to be the case.

Nothing truly dire happened while we were at the hotel, but I somewhat regretted booking here since I could have had a true luxury stay at the Virgin Hotel Chicago (different neighborhood, but still) for only $50 more at the time I was initially hotel shopping. Investing more into cleaning and hospitality details would do wonders for this place. It had good bones and a certain vintage charm to it that was marred by a lack of thoughtful hospitality and cleanliness.

TLDR - Hotel was liveable but had weird vibes & a lack of thoughtful hospitality in addition to being overpriced for the quality...