Aloft Seattle Redmond — Hotel in Redmond

There are issues with this hotel but I rate it 4/5 stars. Long but pls read. Upside: The staff was very friendly, be it the front desk, cleaning, kitchen, or janitorial. The building and rooms are quite trendy. This hotel is located close to many restaurants, especially a wide ethnic cuisine, which I love. As well as grocery stores near by if you want to save money and eat in your room. Close to Tacoma & Seattle. The hotel is pet friendly, which was amazing, with no extra cost. They have free poopie bags with a bin and a patch of fake grass incase your dog is picky on where it goes. It has a breakfast every morning in the sister hotel, which is attached by floor 2. It has a pool, an outdoor eating area with a BBQ, laundry room, and underground parking. The spa which is connected to the hotel is by appointment only, The bar inside the hotel is only open during weekdays, not weekends. The hotel has drinks, snacks, a coffee bar and some microwaveable food for purchase, alcoholic drinks seem to be in the sister hotel 'Elements ', which is only a few steps away. They offer a microwave, cutlery, seasoning, plates, bowls, and cups. The room gives you 2 free bottles of water, a mini fridge, and cable TV. Downside: My Mum and I both ordered double queen rooms. However, her room was twice the size of mine. I was traveling with my daughter and a dog and we had the smaller room than my Mum who was on her own, and we paid the same price... Our AC machine dripped the entire trip, the carpet was soaked so we placed a cup underneath it, which dripped brown water and we had to empty it twice a day. As our room was small, the AC was 2 feet away from the bed, leaving one bed frozen and the other warm. Both my room and my mums room had the same issue, the shower door had a gap, so water pours out as you shower and your bath mat is drenched. There is a fan in the bathroom but there was no switch to turn it on, maybe it's supposed to turn on when you hit the lights, but ours did not. Our toilet sliding door was too big, so as you slid it across, it hit the floor and only half closed. Our room phones cut out after 90 seconds, so we ended up just using our mobiles, luckily we paid for roaming. The breakfast bar seems a little unorganized, one day you have a fruit salad, the next you don't. You may receive dishes and cutlery one day or you receive paper plates and plastic forks, there's granola but no yogurt, and no jams for toast. This could be a supply issue but I'm unsure. There's not enough tables for 2 hotels to eat breakfast in one room, often you're left eating in your lap on a chair. We were told breakfast went until 10am from the front desk, however at 930 the kitchen staff came out and started clearing everything away, even though people were trying to get a coffee or food. Also the fake grass for dogs to pee and poo on is directly infront of the breakfast room window, so you receive a good show of dogs pooping while you eat. The pool was salted and clearly not cleaned often as the salt build up was very noticable, the dirt on the pool wall was orange and was removable when you touched it, there were floating bits in the water, the windows were not cleaned while we stayed there, and the surrounding floor has the same dirt and bits on it from the previous days. Cleaning is very lax in the hotel. However I will state, they are clearly running on a skeleton crew as I saw the same friendly faces throughout the long days. Whether Marriott has put a cap on hiring costs or they can't physically find staff, I believe that if they had a proper amount of staff, they would be on top of the cleaning. Considering Washington's minimum wage is around $10 Canadian and they have roughly the same cost of living as we do in BC, our minimum wage is almost $17, so it don't blame them for having troubles hiring, which seems to be prudent...

What seemed to be a nice modern hotel in a convenient area of Redmond and Bellevue, next to Microsoft, turned out to be a night of no rest. The hotel was nice, modern, spacious, but the entry seemed odd. You pull into the gated subterranean garage, walk through 2 sets of (unsecured) glass doors, walk past the bank of room elevators (which face the garage), continue around a large corner and finally reach the front desk. As a solo woman traveler, it was a bit confusing. I registered, collected my key card, went back to the elevator bank, got inside, and while I was fishing around for my newly received key card, someone in the elevator asked what floor and flashed their key card, saying “Oh! I guess the keycards work on any floor.” I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But when I returned that evening after visiting family, the nightmare began. As I drove toward the garage gate, I noticed a few groups of people (men, I believe) hanging out in the upper drive, primarily smoking, maybe about 10 individuals. I flashed my keycard at the parking gate, and pulled into the well-lit garage. As I exited my car and approached the 2 sets of glass doors, I noticed two men head down the garage ramp, walk through the glass doors, and head toward the elevators. Out of safety, I thought I’d wander around the lobby so I wouldn’t have to share an elevator with them. But when I came back around, they were playing shuffleboard, so I got into an elevator, praying no one would get in at the last minute. I got off on my floor, and walking toward my room, I heard men in one room loudly arguing and was thankful I wasn’t next door to them. I got into my room, and about 9:30, heard a woman crying loudly in the hall and a man talking softly to her. All I could see out of my peephole was a woman in, what later turned out, a very short strapless dress, but at the time I thought she was wrapped in a bath towel. They eventually went into the ice room (next door to me) and the arguing and crying escalated. Since it was after 10, I called the front desk and let them know. Within a very short time, the front desk clerk and another hotel employee came to investigate. However, I feared for the 2 young ladies’ safety, being able to hear the conversations and see through my peephole. The employees dissipated the problem, and all seemed well. But within about 10 minutes, I heard loud crying and protesting coming from the woman again, and looked through my peephole, only to see a man carrying the same woman through the halls in a Heimlich type maneuver, with her protesting the whole time. I called the front desk and no one answered. A few minutes later, I saw the hotel employee who had been part of the initial investigation. She reassured me that the police had been called. The next morning, the hotel manager asked how my stay was, and I hesitantly told him that I had been on the floor with all the disturbance. He apologized and said it wasn’t usual for this hotel, and he comp’d my parking for the night ($15). Not sure if it WAS an unusual night, not sure if it is the location, but I do feel that there should be more security considerations placed between the parking garage, the elevators, and the front desk. I don’t remember seeing security cameras or monitors, but coupled with my experience and lack of sleep, I most likely won’t be...

This is our 2nd stay in the last few months and we choose it because of your great pet policy and we have 2 small dogs. On our first stay we told the hotel about the dogs coming etc and they said it would all be ready, it wasn’t at all, only the dog bed and one bowl. Upon us calling down to request the other items, staff was confused no clue where to find the things, came up after 2 more calls and just handed us the biggest bag of bones and an open bag of toys. No one knew where to tell us the dogs could pee etc. it was so awkward. I talked to managment the next day and it went ok and she threw some extra points on our account.

We then had to go to the area last minute this weekend and thought we would give the hotel one more chance, have them very specific heads up on 2 dogs, please have bowls, bed, doorhanger, treats toys etc

I also gave them our SPG number etc.

Upon arrival, there was only two dog bowls and nothing else at all and when we call down to kindly request the other items no one knew where they were and that’s what they said we’re not sure where any treats or toys are but we can try to look around. After a while somebody came and brought a big bag of treats lettuce region and just take some with her hands and never found any toys. Also, we never received the doorhanger to alert the staff that there are dogs in the room as well. When we went to check out we needed to request a little bit of a later check out and call downstairs to ask for the check out and say said there was none available and we let them know we were SPG members and they said no we weren’t and they didn’t have that on the reservation??? We said we were and gave them our number. They then let us have a little later check out.

It was all a mess again. Talked to management again and they said they would give us 2,000 points. All appreciated but none of the staff had answers for us and everyone made it very awkward. We travel a lot and have many customers in our biz that do as well and we cannot recommender this place especially when traveling with pets, which we do often. We love the feel of the hotel, the rooms etc but...

Also, we were given drink coupons upon check in and couldn’t use them all for alcohol but wanted to get a Shirley temple or 2 and we had to pay for those????...