The Ritz-Carlton Club, Vail — Hotel in Vail

The Ritz-Carlton Club, Vail (5 nights) - my 2nd experience with Ritz brand and not impressed at all.  |Location - not near central Vail village but over to the west of Lionshead near the Marriott (The Hythe) which I have also stayed at along with several other lodgings around Vail.  The shuttle bus into Vail village , if you're inclined, is a little walk up the street at the Hythe. The Hythe is a much friendlier and warmer place with a large open floor plan. The Ritz hotel itself is not a cozy place to retreat to and felt cold and isolated with an empty bar & lounge. The amenities in the apartment were fine, most appliances were stainless steel.  | The Ritz-Carlton condo apartment #112 is in the worst location of the entire hotel complex, on the ground floor, closest to the roads...  Both bedrooms, dining room and living rooms are facing right onto the frontage road and close to the highway. Also, there's a BBQ grilling and secondary lobby area that looks right in on one the bedrooms. You can hear the trucks zooming by on the highway as well as the local buses(every 10 minutes), shuttles and cars on the frontage road. Totally false advertising IMO, the apartment looks nothing like the pictures on booking sites especially in winter when there's no leaves on the trees that might block seeing the roads but not the sound of hearing the traffic all night long. A complete and very expensive rip-off.| I expected a big living room with a serene majestic mountain scene in the background - not!| The booking process was extremely painful. After I had already paid, upfront, the entire stay amount, a day later I received an email demanding that I supply & verify a fairly substantial list of personal information for validating my identity - even though I had already paid? Then in the same email, threatening to lose my entire payment that I had paid if I didn't respond in 24 hours. I can tell you if I could, I would have cancelled the entire transaction right then and there because of that email.| Last issue, the Ritz has nothing to do with these apartment rentals as it's managed by Red Awning and the micro-managed by another company Berkshire Hathaway Colorado Properties. So who is responsible when something is wrong? |Ultimately no-one is responsible it seems with two intermediary management companies involved.  | I went to the Ritz front desk to complain about the noisy room location. The front desk said yes there is another room available from what they saw on their computer, however they had to coordinate with the management company.  I finally got a call from a representative of the management company over an hour later. The person was extremely rude and unprofessional, interrupting me whenever I spoke, along with basically saying that I'm stuck with the crappy room with all the street sound(and that there was no street sound), people walking by able to look in the apartment. I seriously contemplated hoping on the shuttle bus going back to Vail 4S(easons) and will next time. I should have gone with my first instinct a canceled the booking, but I wanted to give the Ritz brand a second chance to redeem itself.| So here's my response -never again! I could say more but seriously it's not worth it - save yourself some substantial money with the implied Ritz name and attributes by staying at one of the many classier and friendlier lodgings in...

We reserved a 3 bedroom suite/condo for the week for my family of 5. You may be wondering how my overall score is a 2 when I gave everything else 4s and 5s. Here's the tale of a great vacation with 2 horrible mornings. It all started out when they put us on the first floor facing the wall of the next hotel and right over the drive down to the garage, could overlook that as you could look at an angle from the patio and see some trees and a bit of mountain between the buildings, we could live with it as we were in an amazing location... but when you are startled awake at 7am and again the next morning at 8am while on your vacation by truck mounted power washing equipment directly below your window, that is unacceptable. I confirmed this was a Ritz contractor, so it wasn't like it was out of their control. Also, zero notice, no note, call, nothing saying "we will be waking you up from your slumber on your holiday well before most people on vacation get up". The gentleman who checked us in could have cared less that he put us on the 1st floor, even though I booked 8+ months in advance. This was our 3rd stay here, both others were perfect, but this one was definitely not. The facilities themselves were great, and the men who work the valet, they are amazing, polite, helpful, all the things you expect from a Ritz Carlton and then some. The location is also wonderful, easy walk to Lionhead and Vail village, plenty of places to eat and shop. Short drive to Frisco, Avon, Breckenridge, and other areas for all kinds of great shopping and dining. Also, you can hike on mountains, ride gravity coasters, all sorts of entertaining ways to kill a day. We love staying here, but this experience, especially for what you spend to stay at a Ritz Carlton residence, it just shouldn't happen. I will point out that someone from the hotel contacted me after the fact and credited me back 1 nights stay, and I appreciate the gesture, but it was clear she just wanted to check a box and placate me and that really I'm just one guest and they needed to get their power washing done early in the morning vs starting at 10 or something (heavy sarcasm implied). If they'd have listened to me and the other guest I met at the front desk who was complaining, and NOT started at 8am the next day, well, this review would read differently. However, when your guests have an issue, and you do it again the very next morning, again with no warning, that speaks volumes to the fact you really aren't that concerned about the guest experience, regardless of what the Ritz Carlton advertising wants you to believe. Will I consider staying here again, probably, as my family loves the location and the suites are amazing! My wife and I already decided against it for 2026 though, we'll try Tahoe instead, and not a...

We stayed at the Ritz Carlton Residences during the busy Christmas week. The facility is lovely, conveniently located and the staff worked hard to deliver services and problem solve when needed.

I have two suggestions from my experience. The concierge team works very hard to help the families assigned to them. Getting restaurant and activity reservations during the holiday season is difficult and requires understanding that reservations for most places are opened 30 days prior to the date and are filled hours after opening. In my experience, going through a concierge often gives an advantage due to their relationships with restaurants and activity providers. This is not true in this case. Each concierge is assigned to serve 100 families during the holiday season and are trying to get all of them reservations. I found that it was more effective to get recommendations from them and call or use Opentable myself.

My second suggestion is to be careful who you are booking your stay with. You can either book directly with the Ritz Carlton residences or with the organization that rents owner offered units for rent. ( cant remember name) I booked through the second option. In the end this was a mistake. Given the significant acceleration of Covid infection and our families health situation, we sought to reschedule our stay. After a lot of discussion and escalating many levels up through the organization, we were told " If you had booked directly with Ritz Carlton this could be arranged and in fact families were allowed to cancel because there wasn't enough snow this year. We were also told "It will be fine and you can't cancel due to fear of something that hasn't happened" Members of our family cancelled due to being in high risk health categories. It was not okay at all, restaurants closed, cancelled all take out service and had terrible service issues due to so many covid positive associates, our ski lessons were cancelled and we had to scramble to get other lessons for the same reason. Our ride to the airport had to be rescheduled because the service has so many people out sick. A member of the staff, said " I woke up this morning, thinking that you were right that it would be better to cancel and felt badly that you weren't allowed to." This was in no way the fault of the wonderful team at the Ritz Carlton. Take away is always book directly with the hotel or facility management. Do not use other...