Palace Modern — Hotel in Santa Fe

Where do I start with this great review of this wonderful hotel?

There was an offer that if I booked between certain dates, I would be eligible for a discounted price. We ended up paying less than $200/night.

When we had terrible weather and were unable to travel during our normal dates, Jen allowed us to use the next available day for our trip or give us a discounted amount. We decided to go with the next available day to add to our trip. We were given plenty of instructions by email and day of by text. This made everything so easy.

Someone mentioned in a review that parking was off site, but it was very close and very convenient. I appreciated this opportunity the hotel gave us. I felt extra secure as one had to have special codes to enter the hotel in various places. Not just anyone could enter.

The room is where everything is - within walking distance. We truly enjoyed this.

Room 8 was extra nice and clean and cozy and pretty. The photos show exactly what they look like. The bed and pillows and chairs were comfortable. The lighting was very modern and pretty cool, actually. Their towels were super soft, smelled good and were still absorbent. They had all the amenities needed for your stay. And the items supplied smelled great, were great for the hair and skin. This was a huge plus!

They had a nearby room with additional items as needed. We had the furthest room stuck in a corner away from walking traffic. It was great.

There is no staff onsite, but they are easy to communicate with and quick to respond. I believe in first class personable staff. And even though I did not see them in person, they did exactly what I would have expected when needed.

There may be other things I cannot remember, but those were the highlights.

Some things to consider in the future...

The open shower idea - the one where about a 2.5 glass is what separates one in the shower from the rest of the restroom is not enough of a separation. The restroom air was cold when trying to lather up. Also, water tends to fall outside of the shower area onto the restroom floor because of the short shower glass. Although there are plenty of bath mats to assist with this, it just drove me crazy to have all this water fall outside of the shower area onto the restroom floor. But this is just a design flaw. It may have been necessary to have a big enough opening to allow people into the shower. But I bet the glass could have been a little bit longer to assist with my little issue.

One afternoon, there were several kids about ages 10-13 playing in the hallway to the rooms and this small sitting area one encounters when entering the second security entrance. They were playing and making all kinds of noise. This could be heard clearly from our room. And keep in mind, we were kind of hidden in a corner of the hall of rooms. But, thankfully, we weren't trying to sleep or anything. It was just annoying. If there is a better way to have a better sound barrier, that would be great.

And I feel bad even mentioning those two things, because we had a WONDERFUL experience.

Thank you! We plan...

Very nice rooms. I would prefer the hosts communicate via text, instead of email, if that’s the preferred communications channel of the guest. It’s contactless or digital concierge/checkin style - which I like - but pushing guests to communicate via email, when many people do not have email notifications pushed to their phones, especially while on vacation (I don’t want to have to check my email), was not optimal. Time-sensitive messages were sent to me via email when I had been texting with them immediately prior. There’s no housekeeping which was stated in the middle of a paragraph of an email sent after I booked, but I missed it. So I asked for housekeeping after our first night and they came, no questions asked (like I have at other hotels with this same “invisible service” - they don’t automatically have housekeeping come to the room, but you just have to request it). When I asked the next day, they said they don’t offer housekeeping (my bad!) except for one complimentary clean (wish I had known that and scheduled it for the middle of my 4 night stay), and any additional cleans for a fee of $40 each (yikes, no thanks). There’s a line item charge for the “amenities closet” if I want to restock anything in the room. Felt like nickel and diming. Drop the amenities line item (what if I don’t use anything in there?), fold it into the price of the room, and tell me up front about your housekeeping policies or whenever it’s obvious I dont know your policy. I stay at hotels because I don’t want to make my own bed - otherwise, I’d stay at an Airbnb! A couple other small annoyances like no speaker to play music on, the shower design makes the water spill out onto the bathroom floor, and an issue with an exterior security camera that captured the inside of our room. It’s not lost on me that I’m complaining about staying at a luxury hotel! But still, the place was pretty and the...

I was attracted to the modern decor and setting in a town where adobe is the prevailing style. However, there were many flaws in the design and administration of the property, I will not ever stay here again! The showers suck. The partition is not long enough and water flows all over the bathroom floor. We had to use so many towels each time anyone showered to dry the floor so no one would slip on the water. Also, the in-room fridge hums really loudly and disturbed our sleep. Once we figured out where the noise was coming from, we had to pull the plug. Lastly, while the “self-service” nature of the hotel may sound appealing, it is just a cost saving measure. We got locked in our room because the digital locks failed. Fortunately it was during the day and there was a team member on site. The lock did not get fixed, but fortunately there was an unoccupied adjoining room they opened and we were able to leave from that room. BUT, if there was no adjoining room, we would have been stuck for who knows how long. If this happened at night when no team member was on site, it would have been even worse. The ONLY redeeming aspect of this property is the wonderful and lovely staff who did their best to help and accommodate, but these factors are out of their control and doesn’t make up for the faulty design of...