AC Hotel Palo Alto — Hotel in Palo Alto

We’ve stayed at a bunch of hotels in the area and this was not our favorite. We stayed for a week and think a Residence Inn or a hotel with different features and amenities would be better for this price point.

Cons: The front desk service seemed very forgetful / inattentive. We asked them to clean our room halfway through our stay and it was forgotten. We asked about getting silverware and they said they would send it up, but it never happened. We asked about an Amazon package and the front desk said it wasn’t received, and later in our stay we found out it was at Hotel Citrine. We asked if we could add housekeeping tip to our bill (since there’s no ATM onsite and we’ve seen that being possible at another Marriott property) and they said they’d let us know, and then we never heard back. This level of service was different from our experience at comparable prices hotels in the area. We had a room with 1 king bed and the setup was just weird and not user friendly. The bathroom setup is odd - the sink isn’t closed off from the rest of the room, so if one person is sleeping and one is for example washing hands or brushing teeth, it’s loud for the whole room. There isn’t a trash can near the sink area. When the door to the toilet is opened inward there’s no space to also sit on the toilet. The water temperature in the shower changed every day so even if you didn’t move the temperature knob the temperature was always different. There’s no proper closet (just a few hangers in a sort of odd open hook area) and no drawers to unpack clothes. It’s the small things that add up. The in room amenities sucked relative to the price (no bathrobe, shampoo products weren’t nice, bar soap instead of liquid hand soap, etc). This isn’t a huge deal to us but just much less nice than other places we’ve stayed Valet parking only and sometime it can take a while to retrieve the car (their SLA is 15 min)

Pros The room was clean - as it should be, but that isn’t always the case so worth pointing out. The gym is pretty decent - 2 treads, 2 ellipticals, 2 bikes, 1 bench, a full rack of weights, some yoga mats There is a drinking water machine on every floor Refrigerator in room - it’s small but can certainly fit a few items like if you want to keep breakfast...

Where do I start? ||I have stayed in a few AC hotels and find them hit or miss. Some of the older locations I actually prefer to those newly built, and this hotel illustrates several reasons why: form over function.||First off, this hotel does not have self-parking, but there is parking in the neighborhood, or you can valet park. The hotel itself does not have a restaurant, but shares the restaurant at its sister property Citrine, just across the driveway. This hotel does set out coffee and tea in the morning.||My first impression was good, as the hotel is pretty new and modern. My arrival was also nice, with a very friendly valet and front desk ambassador. It was when I arrived to my room that I was reminded why I find AC hotels frustrating: everything about the actual room was just poorly thought out. There is no closet, only a tiny bar in the bath area to hang items. I'm short and had difficulty even reaching the bar to hang my clothes. There is not really a bathroom. The sink is separated from the bedroom by just a mirror. the toilet and shower have glass doors on them. ||If you are traveling with friends, this could get quite intimate quite fast. There is no privacy whatsoever.||What's really frustrating about this setup is the automatic lights that come on when you get up at night. In my room, when I went to the bathroom at night the motion sensor turned on all of the bright bath area lighting. If someone else was trying to sleep through that it would be impossible without a sleep mask. ||Figuring out how to turn on/off lights also was confusing. None of the switches are labeled and some are on motion sensors. ||The desk area has two outlets on the lamp, but I could not figure out how to get my charger to plug into it. There seemed to be a guard over the actual outlet that made it impossible to plug an item in. ||My final note about the room would be the bedding. It felt somewhat cheap, sort of polyester-like. ||This AC charges premium prices north of 300 dollars per night. I just cannot see myself ever returning here. I'd probably go across to the sister property, Citrine, for a future stay if I needed to be near Google or other companies in the area. While the rooms look nice at first, they are just really not...

Where do I start? ||I have stayed in a few AC hotels and find them hit or miss. Some of the older locations I actually prefer to those newly built, and this hotel illustrates several reasons why: form over function.||First off, this hotel does not have self-parking, but there is parking in the neighborhood, or you can valet park. The hotel itself does not have a restaurant, but shares the restaurant at its sister property Citrine, just across the driveway. This hotel does set out coffee and tea in the morning.||My first impression was good, as the hotel is pretty new and modern. My arrival was also nice, with a very friendly valet and front desk ambassador. It was when I arrived to my room that I was reminded why I find AC hotels frustrating: everything about the actual room was just poorly thought out. There is no closet, only a tiny bar in the bath area to hang items. I'm short and had difficulty even reaching the bar to hang my clothes. There is not really a bathroom. The sink is separated from the bedroom by just a mirror. the toilet and shower have glass doors on them. ||If you are traveling with friends, this could get quite intimate quite fast. There is no privacy whatsoever.||What's really frustrating about this setup is the automatic lights that come on when you get up at night. In my room, when I went to the bathroom at night the motion sensor turned on all of the bright bath area lighting. If someone else was trying to sleep through that it would be impossible without a sleep mask. ||Figuring out how to turn on/off lights also was confusing. None of the switches are labeled and some are on motion sensors. ||The desk area has two outlets on the lamp, but I could not figure out how to get my charger to plug into it. There seemed to be a guard over the actual outlet that made it impossible to plug an item in. ||My final note about the room would be the bedding. It felt somewhat cheap, sort of polyester-like. ||This AC charges premium prices north of 300 dollars per night. I just cannot see myself ever returning here. I'd probably go across to the sister property, Citrine, for a future stay if I needed to be near Google or other companies in the area. While the rooms look nice at first, they are just really not...