The Henley Park Hotel — Hotel in Washington

This review is about the afternoon tea service; we did not stay at the hotel. I made reservations here for tea for my birthday for a large group. Between the automatic gratuity for a party of our size and the high prices, it was just under $100 per person. It was not worth this price.

The pros: the reservation process was easy, and was able to accommodate large groups. I was also able to reach someone on the phone in advance to ask them to accommodate a vegetarian member of our party. The atmosphere was fine; it was not particularly fancy, but it was also quiet and fairly peaceful. The scones did come with actual clotted cream and lemon kurd. The other major pro is that we did have two people who canceled the day of the reservation, and I sincerely acknowledge that this is inconvenient and that the hotel did not charge us for this.

The cons: I don’t usually write about service in restaurant reviews unless to shout out really great service, because I tend to distrust whether people were really just being rude and picky customers. But the experience when we got to the hotel itself really stood out as a bad service experience. Our server came off as annoyed at us the entire time we interacted with him. I had to raise my voice as he walked away with our tea orders just to call out a request for some milk to come with the tea. After serving us our initial tea and food, he did not check on us a single time to see if we needed anything else, in the entire 90 minutes or so that we were there. I at one point tried to flag him down to ask for some more clotted cream, and eventually just gave up. I likewise gave up on getting more milk for the tea, as he simply did not look in our direction. We were never asked if we wanted any tea refills.

The food was served equally brusquely. He plopped down one tray at one of end of the table and said that one was prepared for three people, and plopped another at the other end of the table and said it was prepared for four people. After he walked away, we realized that actually all the plates have been mixed up so that there were scones for four people on one side and sandwiches for four people on the other side, etc. Mistakes happen; we sorted it out ourselves. I wouldn’t have noted it if it weren’t for the overall negative experience.

The amount of clotted cream and lemon curd provided for the scones was the same for the side that had four people as it was for the side that had three, and as I mentioned, we were never able to put in a request for any additional servings.

The food was unexceptional, especially for that price. There was a nice berries and cream opener before the main tray came out. The flavors were decent. But the sandwich bread was very dry and the sandwiches in particular were quite small. I usually leave afternoon tea feeling stuffed. I did not here. At the end, we politely asked our server what the card limit was for splitting the bill. He said something along the lines of “3 cards maximum—that’s what Venmo is for,” which again seemed unnecessarily passive aggressive.

Overall, I felt bad that I had asked my friends to come pay such a high price for my birthday tea—some of the folks attending had never had afternoon tea before—only for them to have such a mediocre experience. I would have called that a $50 tea with $20 service; $100 was...

come here if you like wasting your money! my friends and i booked this hotel for a convention as the center was right across the street. the convention site we used for booking told us that there were two beds and kitchenette. NO place in this hotel has 2 beds or cooking amenities and we learned that we had booked a 1 king bed room and that is it. we ended up having to bring an air mattress and an air fryer so we wouldnt have to cram 4 people into a king bed and have to pay a hefty price to eat food at their extremely expensive downstairs restaurant. no food or drink is included with the room other than a shared water dispenser in the lobby (was the only good part about this hotel). additionally, the elevators take FOREVER to come around and we were waiting for 15 minutes at one point. we were on the 4th floor and could hear every angry driver honking, every ambulance/police that came down the road every 5 minutes, and could even hear people yelling below. hows that for a relaxing weekend?

we booked thursday to sunday. the online booking had it at around 940 for those days (around 270 per night, NOT the 161 that google is saying)yet when we checked in we were charged 1300. when asked about the extra charge, the person at the desk said "its an insurance fee" and forced my friend to just give the card no questions asked. while checking in he verbally told us that we are staying thursday to sunday (yes, that is what we booked and we have receipts). so we go on and do the thing at the convention. when trying to check out on sunday, another lady tells us that we were booked until monday. she said there is nothing she can do about it since we signed the booking. we showed her the receipts we have from the website saying we are booked until SUNDAY and that the person at checkin said we were booked until SUNDAY. she said "well we cant be sure that those are real and the person at check in actually said that you were staying until sunday, the only thing we have is that you are here until monday. we cant do anything about it because my superior isnt here." and sent us away. not only did she offer us zero solutions, she accused us of lying to try to get out of the extra day that we didnt book. we all had to leave on SUNDAY as my friend came in from california, one from massachusetts, im from canada, and none of us live in DC and we had to get to our flights. they said that theyd call us for checkout on monday(they did not) and when we did try to check out, they said they couldnt do anything about the extra charge and refused to give us a receipt because we booked it through the convention's website. they also never gave us our "insurance fee" back which is about 60 per night (make sure to account for this when you stay, your bill will be higher than expected!)

this might be no problem for rich people, but we are just a bunch of 20-somethings trying to enjoy one of the single good things we can have in this horrible economy. we dont have 300 dollars to throw around willy nilly, we cant just not get on our flights, we cant just "stay another night" when we have to get home and get to work. come stay here if youre a rich vacationer who doesnt care about your money. dont come here if you actually have...

I was excited to stay at a cute brick historic hotel bc it’s so different from the more modern designed hotels. My stay started out fine, nothing spectacular, the rooms are tiny but I was comfortable. I was there to visit friends and go to the convention nearby. On the 2nd night on my way back in for the day I saw a big rat on the street, not the hotels fault by any means so I wrote it off. The next day I was coming in from my convention and touring the city, I go into my room and I notice a piece of wrapped hersheys chocolate on the nightstand that I had left was chewed up and nibbled. I knew right away there was a rodent (rat or mouse) in the room. The hotel offered another room immediately but I have a phobia of rodents, I checked out and left thinking I would get a full refund for the inconvenience. The front desk did not offer to help me find a different hotel or transport and I left walking with all my bags across the street. The doorman was nice enough to help me with my bags to cross the street to the Marriott marquis which was also holding the convention. The front desk man at the Henley even seemed upset at me but then later that night I got an apologetic email (attached). The hotel took pictures and luckily didn’t deny the allegation. I also took pictures (attached) but was too scared to look under the bed. On the first day I did look under the bed after dropped something and it was very dirty with crumbs but the bed frame is too low to the ground I know they can’t get a vacuum underneath. Makes me wonder if the whole hotel had a rodent issue and they already knew the drill. I understand things happen but I would expect hospitable service and a full refund. I am not a combative person and was very nice but when I went to speak to the manager which I think was named Erick the next morning, he became a bit combative/argumentative with just a little push back and was extremely unprofessional. He told me he would try to get me a full refund. When the refund began to take more than week to be reflected I decided to call chase travel since I booked through them. Chase travel went through 3 different managers who refused to give me the full refund. I paid for 5 nights and left on the 3rd day, leaving 3 nights. They only agreed to refund me much less than half of my stay which doesn’t add up at all. Now it’s been 3 weeks and I still haven’t seen any refund at all. When I call them they say it’s Expedias fault (I booked through chase travel). They tell me to call Expedia and when I do there is no information from my stay bc I didn’t even book through them. Chase travel says it’s the hotels fault. So at this point all fingers are pointing to the ignorance of this hotel. This whole situation is so frustrating, I tried to kill them with kindness but now I learned it does not pay to be kind in these types of situations. It was so expensive to get another hotel same day and Henley park hotel should have offered at least some kindness and assistance. Stay away from this hotel as it likely has a rodent...