University Place Hotel & Conference Center — Hotel in Portland

BEWARE: AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

Stay far away from this hotel! I had the worst experience ever staying at this place. The pictures here are completely misleading and are only the tip of the iceberg of problems that this place had. I was treated poorly by staff, had a loud noisy room beside the parking lot where someone was trying to look in, sliding glass door was held by a loose bolt, and staff at one point even tried to kick me out of my room at 9:10pm at night.

First, you are tricked into this place because the location is really good location to get around Portland, the University Place Conference Center is just around the corner from a LRT station which makes getting around super simple.

The hotel is an older outdated three floor operation with dimly lit halls and looks super shady in any place besides the lobby. A free basic buffet comes with your stay that has all the staple complementary foods. Staff who checked me in didn't explain why he took my credit card (for the deposit, I heard another staff say) and never gave me my free cookie that apparently everyone gets. I understand he was a trainee but he left out a lot of info. On the other hand, I did have one exceptional staff member help me with facilitating a room change while the others left me in a very awkward and unsafe room. I sent email to the hotel commenting on her excellent customer service along with all the horrible things that happened.

I would not recommend room 124 to anyone who stays here, it's on the first floor near the parking lot and is very outdated. The sound insulation is very poor and you'll hear everyone from the parking lot. The lock on the sliding glass door was also loose so I was also concerned. Wasn't until I talked to three staff members that I was able to move and that was because it was not only so noisy but I saw that there was some dude that was trying to LOOK INTO MY ROOM. That's when I knew there was no way I was going to be staying in a shady room where they had to use a curtain to to hide the unfinished cement wall that it was hiding.

The second room I was placed in was much better and I thought everything would be okay. But I was told that I shouldn't have been in that room because it was "non operational". Um what? Then WHY was I even given this room? Staff rudely called me at 9:10pm asking me to leave saying I shouldn't have been assigned that room. It was very bizarre and I asked them to follow up the next day but nobody did. Ironically, when I came back later that even nobody came to do housekeeping, as if someone was trying to punish me for all the issues I pointed out. Well, I would still like to remind the hotel that I am a paying customer and that you CAN'T do that. The power in the room also went out randomly and I was in a blackout for 5 minutes. Then, the TV was flickering intermittently as if the room was possessed by a ghost or something, it was extremely bizarre.

Overall, this place is a mixed bag but the worse part was the way in which things were handled by its staff. The saying is usually A for effort but I would say in this case D for effort, F in execution. I will be following up with hotel management to investigate what happened in this situation.

UPDATE: Contacted the University with an official complaint letter, and was told I would get a follow up by the end of the week. It has been 3 weeks and no response. I'm escalating the claim higher but at this point, I see how poorly the public tax money from the people of Oregon are spent. This place doesn't even try to hide that it doesn't even care about its customers. A complete disappointment in all regards. Don't ever stay here unless you want to be frightened, treated rudely by staff and be placed in poorly outdated rooms that are probably...

TERRIBLE FRONT DESK SERVICE. We stayed for 3 nights. The front desk agents didn't seem to like their jobs very much... not cheerful, no smiles, no "How are you?" or "Hello" - except for one agent who was in fact very friendly. I stayed with my grandmother and 9 year old sister. When we checked in, my sister put her things in the drawers in the dresser and night stand - a body lotion, body spray, hair brush, and some additional small items. On the day we checked out, we realized we had completely forgot about the drawers when packing up to leave, so all the things she had stored in there were left behind. I called the hotel immediately, and was told it would take them A COUPLE OF DAYS to check for the items in the room. This sounded very strange to me because as a hotel, most of your guests don't live in the area so checking for something should be done the same day so it can be picked up before they leave town - ALSO, it should be looked for PRIOR to checking another guest into the room for another stay, especially when I called about it and specifically and politely asked on the date of departure. I was then told someone would call me back, but the agent didn't even ask for my name, phone number, or room number - which tells me she never even planned to look for them!!!! Nobody called me back, so I called back 2 days later and spoke with someone who said they were the assistant manager. They seemed to be helpful and understanding and said they would talk to their housekeeping manager, as they "don't have access to the lost and found" (which also sounded pretty strange...), and then would call me back within 2 business days and took my information. TWO WEEKS LATER AND NO PHONE CALL!!!! So I called back yet again and was told they would AGAIN speak with their housekeeping manager and I would receive a call back. I think they realized by this time I wasn't going to just give it up, so I DID finally receive a call from their housekeeping manager the next day who says she now can't find the items. REALLY?... This is TERRIBLE customer service. If you had taken the initiative to just walk up the 1 flight of stairs and check the drawer when I called the SAME DAY I CHECKED OUT, the items would have been easily found and I could have picked them up. This kind of service is simply lazy and unacceptable.

On a side note, the restaurant attached to the hotel had absolutely excellent customer service. We also thought the room was nice, and would have honestly rated the property 4 stars if the staff weren't...

Night staff is absolutely terrible and disrespectful. Especially the blonde named Jessica. Would not let me get a single word in. Me, a 17 year old, another 17 year old, and an 18 year old, were kicked out into downtown Portland at 1 AM after driving 3 hours to the hotel when they would not let us check in although the name on the reservation matched up with the 18 year old with us who was paying for the hotel room we would all be staying in. The Jessica lady called campus security on us because of “fraud” because of the fact that a few days ago we had tried checking in and only had a picture of the person on the reservations ID as they had forgotten it at home 3 hours away. We had booked through Hopper and told them what had happened with them not letting us check in. Hopper reached out to the hotel and Hopper sent us an email telling us that they had talked to the hotel and since they had given the money already to the hotel for the night that they were not letting us check in that we would then be given credit for another night to stay there and that is why we came back the second time. When we arrived at the hotel the second time we were greeted by rude and disrespectful Jessica who from right off the bat of us walking in is not letting anyone in our group of people get a single word in to explain the story, when we start talking to her she rudely interrupts us EVERY single time and doesn’t let us finish explaining that Hopper has talked to them and why we have credit for a night. We had called prior to coming the second time and talked to a man who was actually nice and understanding and had us send him the email from hopper stating that we would have credit for when we come back, he got the email and confirmed it, but yet Jessica was unable to find the email, Or any notes for that matter from Hopper calling them, or even notes of the guy we talked to before coming in taking down our debit card information for that night. This was a very unpleasant experience and we ended up staying in a motel 6 in Vancouver off the 205 and it was cheaper and hassle free with no problems and frankly better than the pictures of this hotel or the other reviews...