Sheraton Grand Seattle — Hotel in Seattle

On Thursday, August 7th at 9:40, my husband and I decided to come down and dine at the Fountain Wine Bar in Seattle. It’s a restaurant underneath the Sheraton Grand in downtown Seattle.

We had visited here the previous night, but only had drinks. Being that we were spending a week at the hotel, we decided to keep it local and have dinner nearby as we had been sightseeing all day and were exhausted.

Upon arriving at the restaurant we walked right in and had a seat at a nearby available table. Mind you, there is no check in available. It’s a “seat yourself” type of place and a server will approach you at their earliest. We waited about 20-25 minutes with no acknowledged whatsoever by the servers walking by. Other guests who arrived much later were being served much faster. So my husband decided to just go up to the bar and order the food and drinks himself while I waited at the table. Soon after, a server approached the table and began placing napkins down. She didn’t even greet me. She looked up at my husband ordering at the bar and said, “Oh, he went up there to order?” and continued to slap the napkin in front of me and walked away. Not even asking if I needed anything. When I told her that he decided to order at the bar because we had waited for a long time, “she turned away from me, walked to an adjacent table to take their order all while making a shooshing hand gesture at me. Naturally I was offended by this. When I went over to ask for her name, she covered her name badge and said no. I mean, why even wear a name badge if you are going to cover it up anyway?

I walked over to the bar tender to where my husband was and asked if he could provide me with her name so that I may formally file a complain against her. The bartender asked me who it was and when I pointed at her he chuckled and sighed and said, with a smile “oh yeah” rolled his eyes and said he could not disclose her name to me. I was shocked by the secrecy of it all. Working for a large company myself, this type of behavior would be extremely unacceptable.

My husband approached the server and asked if there was a problem and she became irate, asking for the room number we were staying in, all while covering up her name badge. She dashed out the restaurant to get her manager as we asked her to do so, but before doing so she yelled near the elevators , making sure security was alerted and my husband and I were stopped by security and forced to explain to them what had happened. Fortunately, the security guards gave us the servers name…Tiba (not sure about the spelling) and we decided to go back up to the room and call the hotel to file a former complaint about the incident. Whoever was managing that night didn’t really do much over the phone. All she said was “it’s been a long night and we all need sleep. Let’s all talk in the morning.” Again, I was beyond shocked by her response. She promised to follow up in the morning. It’s now been four days with no word on the follow up.

It’s also impossible to get through to anyone when you try and contact the lobby. You have to physically go down if you need to speak with anyone since no one will ever answer the phones.

This experience was completely ruined by Tiba and the hotels staff as they did nothing to help resolve this issue with their Elite members. Truly a disappointing experience. Do not dine here. Service...

If, like mine, your visit to Seattle is a business one, focussed on the Arch convention centre and restaurants within a twelve-minute walk thereof, you’ll appreciate the convenient centrality of the Sheraton Grand Seattle. If what you’re after is seafood from Salty’s at Alki Beach, or a walk across the Ballard Locks, or a day on the many miles of cycling trails to the north, then you don’t need the Sheraton’s centrality and in fact the streets of the city centre might strike you as dauntingly gritty, especially first thing in the morning anywhere near 3rd Avenue. By virtue of its location if nothing else, this is essentially a business hotel.||Don’t be at all put off by a room on a high floor; the lifts are plentiful and quick. My room (1101) was quiet and comfortable, the shower heated up quickly, and I could almost roll out of bed and into a meeting at the convention centre across the street. (The only thing missing would be a pedestrian bridge from the hotel directly into the convention centre!) AC and USB sockets were plentiful and there was a large circular table and chair at which to work, although I would have preferred a proper desk.||I appreciated that I was asked at reception whether I wanted the room to be made up each day. In fact because I was spending all day and evening at conference events I hadn’t much time to trash the place, so I said no. I did ask for coffee supplies sufficient for the entire length of my stay, though, and these promptly appeared in my room! And the in-room coffee technology is easy and intuitive: pop in an individually packaged tray and press the button.||I did on one of my four days eat breakfast in the restaurant, Alder & Ash. Unless you’re a ravenous teenager there’s no need to opt for the buffet; you can order à la carte for half the price, and save $5 by using the coffee in your room instead of ordering it alongside your breakfast. The main comes with a generous side of potatoes.||The FedEx business centre on the second floor is important to have available for any last-moment conferencing needs. It was well staffed, although I used it only to receive a parcel that arrived a couple of days ahead of me. (All packages for guests of the hotel are handled by this FedEx office.)||On my final morning in Seattle I did try the gym, though some of the machines differed from those in my usual gym so were difficult to sort out. The pool was small, and as I wanted not to be on view through the floor-to-ceiling windows between it and the gym, I avoided trying the pool. If you do want easy access to the gym, ask for a room in the Pike tower so that you needn’t traipse through the lobby on the way between your room in the Union tower and the pool atop the Pike.||I had no trouble at all with the free wifi, which was plenty fast enough for everything that I needed to do, including occasional streaming video. There was never any delay...

Lovely hotel, with an excellent hard product (splendid rooms), but some aspects of how the property operates may be irksome for Platinum plus members. Here’s why:

The lounge is open 24/7 and serves breakfast from 0630-1030, and snacks at any other time. It’s a lovely lounge with good variety in hot and cold beverages, and an excellent spread in snacks. Elite members here reported in different reviews that the breakfast was either great or horrendous, and that’s because the breakfast service in the Lounge varies based on the day of the week.

These are the breakfast offerings for the weekdays: Eggs Sausages Bacon Cold cuts Caprese salad Toast/bread with jam and butter Fresh fruit Oatmeal Cereal Pastries Juice/soda/coffee/espresso beverages/tea

Here’s the version for the weekend: Fresh fruit Oatmeal Cereal Pastries Juice/soda/coffee/espresso beverages/tea

In short, the Sheraton Grand axes all the more substantial hot breakfast options during the weekend, much to the disappointment of elite members, with no relief, given that restaurant breakfasts are not an amenity available on the property as a platinum welcome benefit (or for that matter Titanium or Ambassador). The main reasoning here is that they don’t have an agreement with the new new restaurant, and I’ve found that they only do a-la-carte breakfasts. While the Sheratons have historically been seen as one of the more generous brands in the Marriott portfolio, they aren’t generous enough pull an AMEX Fine Hotels and Resorts power move on you and comp a free made to order breakfast, so for now, no breakfast option for you. That said, Alder and Ash is a gorgeous restaurant with decent food quality, though be ready to pony up and pay out of pocket if you choose this option.

Rooms wise, the hotel is excellent, rooms are in good repair, and the overall decor is up to current Sheraton branding standards. The offsite self park option is also a steal and super easy given that it’s across the street. I also appreciate how wide the stalls are for a downtown parking lot. The staff have also been very helpful and accommodating, so other than the snafu with the lounge breakfast, I have no complaints.

While I get that this property is a conference hotel, it’s a feeble excuse to be stingy with the weekend lounge breakfasts when members have already been slapped in the face with the revocation of the breakfast welcome benefit. This weekend “breakfast” complies with Marriott’s guidelines of providing continental breakfast, but given that the differences between weekday and weekend breakfasts essentially being night and day this does feel like an act of “hostile compliance”. I would note that other conference hotels such as the Marriott Marquis San Francisco consistently serve a respectable spread in their club lounges throughout the week, and this back was in November 2022, when hotels were hurting to a much greater degree from...