Hotel Zena Washington DC — Hotel in Washington

If I could give this hotel 0 stars I would! I recently stayed here on a work trip with a few other coworkers.When I stay at hotels I normally put the do not disturb sign on the door as I don’t love people being in my room when I am not there. There was an issue with their hot water and they had to fix it from 11pm-3am (we will get back to this) and so they left slips on my coworkers doors stating the water would be down from these times. However, I noticed my door did not have one. Upon entering my room with the do not disturb sign still in place the paper was on top of my coffee bar IN THE ROOM. Major invasion of privacy. The hot water continued not to work. When I woke up at 8:30am to shower prior to my conference there was still no hot water. When I called down to the front desk the staff were very unhelpful stating they didn’t know when the water would be hot again. Now to my main point of why I would 100% never recommend this hotel to anyone or ever stay in it again. On day of checkout I went down to the front to checkout and leave my bags with the concierge as we had a late flight and wanted to explore the city. The concierge man asked if I wanted my receipt emailed or printed. I responded with email. Never was a smoking or vape fee that they were charging me with ever brought up. About 5 minutes went by and I hadn’t gotten an email with my receipt so I went up to inquire about this and a printed copy was provided. At the bottom was a $350 smoking fee. I have never smoked or vaped in my entire life. I was quite caught off guard and questioned this. A female concierge shared a graph from a sensor in my room that showed I had vaped or smoked for 20 minutes in the morning. Neither the man nor female at the front desk could offer any information. At the bottom of the graph showed “aerosols” when I questioned the staff about me using my dry shampoo or texturizing aerosols spray they said it couldn’t be from that. I was appalled. $350 is a lot of money and the staff working aren’t even informed well enough on it to provide any sort of explanation. I met with the manager later in the day and explained my case how I don’t vape or smoke and the times that it showed I “was” happened to coincide with the same time I was getting ready one morning and guess what? yup, had sprayed my two aerosol products on my head. Technology systems do fail and I asked if there was anyway their system could have failed as it had only been a one time occurrence my entire 4 night stay. The manager did not listen and told me there was no possible way the system had a flaw. She said she needed to review the case and get back to me the next day. She promised she would call me tomorrow. If you’re still reading this the manager on site (Charlene) did in fact not call me back the next day. I left a message for her later on in the day when I hadn’t heard back either. I was in tears over this whole situation. $350 is a lot of money and to be written off that a system does in fact not fail when we all know technology systems do fail!! My recommendation to you is to not stay here if you are female or male wanting to spray any sort of aerosols while you are in DC! The coworkers I was traveling with also agreed with me that upon seeing how I was treated and written off would never recommend this hotel to anyone. I still have never heard back from management about this!...

We recently stayed at Hotel Zena twice in the last couple of months.

After our first stay - we took the upgrade offered at check-in so had a bath tub, sitting area and small eating area - we enjoyed it so much when we got home we immediately booked it again for our next visit to DC.

We love the design of Hotel Zena - it is "women first" without being fussy. The art is displayed in tasteful, playful and unexpected ways, I was quite taken with the high heel piece at the reception desk and the photography in the hallways. Hotel Zena perfectly expresses "modern luxury". The rooms are well balanced with the design elements of natural vs made, soft vs hard, shiny vs dull, light vs dark etc. It a lovely experience. On our first stay we didn't have a lot of interaction with staff, but everyone was professional and friendly.

The centrepiece of the room is absolutely the shower. It is a light colour with a warrior women design in pink and is a cylindrical shape. When the bathroom light is on, it illuminates the rest of the room with a glow, it's lovely. It is also sexy as the person outside of the room can see the silhouette of the person showering, nice!

Our second stay we took an upgrade offered at reception and had a bathtub. It offered similar, lovely design features and the same view of our fist room - which is out onto the traffic circle and adjoining green space. We also looked directly over to the church with it's lovely rainbow banner. There was less pink in our second room, still is was lovely.

This time we had a late dinner downstairs - Figleaf Bar and Lounge and had their Restaurant Week Menu. It was excellent. The gentleman on staff and manager were both so helpful in offering us solutions to what we wanted - it had been a long day and making decisions was slow!

The food was excellent - thoughtful menu and well-executed. We were very grateful for them being able to fit us in without reservations and they made the dining experience wonderful. This time we also were able to dine at the rooftop bar - Hedy's Rooftop. What a fun experience! The view is great and the food and drinks are excellent :) As a funny aside, my husband and I actually ate lunches up there on separate days, due to our travel plans. My husband ate there first and suggested I would enjoy and I really did! The one mistake I made was not bringing along my bathing suit!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Benny at the Front Desk. It happened that this time we needed a lot more assistance - my husband's room key kept demagnetizing and I kept needing various questions answered :) Benny was great throughout - always knowledgeable, friendly, professional and always knew the correct answer. Thank you again for all your assistance, Benny, you really helped make our stay worry-free and we appreciate it.

I hope our next visit to DC it includes a stay...

Hmm... where do I start about this hotel. Let's start with the positives, it is a very convenient location in the heart of DC so you can get to everything is a very short amount of time. If you get the room with the circle view it is very nice! The fig leaf restaurant and bar downstairs where you enter to check in was actually pretty nice. The bartender was super nice and made a very good margarita for happy hour. Now time for the cons, well upon arriving I was looking for valet to park my car, but no one showed up so I got out the car and went to the front desk and no one greeted me when I walked in and there were 2 people at the front desk. So I had to tell someone I need to check in and she assisted me with checking in and then she asked me if will be using valet for my car and I said yes and I asked where is valet located and she said outside and I said I didn't see anyone there but I will look again. So after she checked me in I grabbed a luggage cart and went back out and saw 2 men and one offered to help with our luggage and the other wanted the keys to in check our vehicle for valet. My first impression when I walked in the hotel I wasn't impressed with the look at all tbh. Then we arrived on the floor where our room was located and I definitely wasn't impressed with the dirty filthy carpet I saw. I took some pictures of the carpet as we were about to check out (see pictures). We stayed on the 5th floor. The pictures of the room are to show how the room looked as far as the layout. Not how the room was given to us or anything. I took the pictures of the room as we checked out. Our first night there we went to the roof top bar Hedy's and I was so distracted that I didn't take any pictures of the rooftop bar at all. Just know the pictures online are very deceiving for sure. That rooftop bar looked very unorganized and it also needed to cleaned as well. The cushions on the chair around the pool weren't clean 🫤 and the pool looked like it needed to be cleaned as well. I was disappointed with the bartender because she didn't even tell us to scan the QR code for the menu she just let us stand there and we heard her tell someone else so we did it as well. We ordered the nachos and I will say I liked the taste of the nachos, but it was cold when we got it which is not a good thing (see picture). Don't waste your time going to the rooftop it's not worth the time. All you will see is the hotel next door with a better pool than hotel zena. I really expected to have a luxury stay at hotel zena because of the pictures I saw online, but that's definitely not what we got. The price, service and look of the hotel does not match. I would not recommend this hotel to anyone, and I most certainly will not be staying there again. They need to do alot better with their services and the complete look...