The Ben, Autograph Collection — Hotel in West Palm Beach

I traveled to west palm beach to elope at the courthouse just my fiance and i. we planned everything to a T and although i know nothing goes as planned and we left room for minor disappointments The Ben was the largest disappointment of all.

For starters we paid extra for a king room with a city view and our view included a view 10 feet away from an apartment building with no “city” at all. When we asked to switch rooms they switched us to a standard queen room with the view of a worn down abandoned parking lot. When we brought this to the front desk’s attention we were met with undeniable attitude and absolute zero urgency or respect for the situation. All of this chaos on our first day in town forced me to sit outside of a room with all of my bags for 45+ minutes in the hallway. My now husband was approaches aggressively by a “security guard” whom showed zero hospitality or respect and met our situation with hostility and anger.

The bad experience didn’t end with missing an hour of our stay and spending it in the hallways, we then were charged an unexpected fee of $153.56. When I communicated and asked for an itemized receipt they failed to provide that and basically told me we had to wait until we were on our way out of the door for them to let me know what I was being charged for. We decided to drop it as we spent the night before our wedding night waiting around for them to provide us with what our reservation was booked for.

On my wedding day (today) we asked a kind gentleman who was wearing a Ben uniform if we could use the lobby for pictures and he stated that we could “use ANYWHERE in the building” for pictures and he proceeded to congratulate us. As we were made our way to the elevator we were then approached by a small man who asked us where we got married and if it was today and ended his sentence with “well you need a permit” we proceeded to inform him we already had permission for pictures and he then began to question us about what the guy looked like all while holding an extremely rude facial expression and attitude. After we were done taking pictures upstairs we decided to head back to the elevator and were met with the SAME “security guard “ as the night before and he aggressively told my husband to stop looking at him and continued to tell us we cant take pictures without permission. He continued to badger my husband. MIND YOU its our wedding day!!!!

I am beyond unimpressed and disappointed with the staff, hospitality, and service this hotel provides. They have completely ruined my wedding experience and that is something we cannot get back. If you are thinking about staying here, dont. You will be better off camping in the parking garage next door. I would like to get into contact with the general manager and receive a FULL or partial refund for the way I was treated and the emotional distress...

The winter wonderland was an unfortunate disappointment. I had been looking forward to going for a month, as the website description said in addition to the ice skating, there would be seasonal, festive food and drinks, and shopping for gifts in a "village". The skating rink was beautiful, outside with white lights, but would have been better to have maybe some sort of rotating adults only time and kids only skate time, as it was extremely dangerous the entire time basically constantly watching out for, and dodging people's children that had the big plastic animal shaped handles to keep from falling, bcuz some would fly on their skates pushing the plastic things into people, or some would just wipe out right in front of you and if you can't move out of their way fast enough a big adult can just crash into them and land on them. I'm actually shocked more adults don't get seriously injured. And it wouldn't take much to maybe just rotate every 30 mins, or maybe even have just the adults only after a certain time? Anyway I had fun skating but would have enjoyed it more if it wasn't a constant awareness not to crash into ppl. But the real disappointment was that we went there to EAT dinner too, and there was absolutely NO food for sale there. The small makeshift "village" was a handful of vendor sections in a row, and all but 2 were open. The bar at the end, or the "gifts" one which was hotel logo merchandise. The rest were dark. There was a snack one that no one was there for even tho those lights were on, but was not even food I would eat when I'm starving for dinner...bags of popcorn, large cookie or brownie in a bag etc etc. My partner doesn't skate, and had to pay 20 bucks to literally watch me skate(which was not a big deal, if we both were able to continue enjoying the evening together eating and shopping and walking around there) but then we had to leave as there was absolutely nothing else for us to do there, and we had to get something to eat. There was a very upscale fancy restaurant next to the winter wonderland area, which we were not prepared for, nor able to afford an expensive full sit down dinner like that. No one will read this long review. And no one will even care, as it's just a seasonal event. Even the person on the phone when I called the ben to say it isn't right to advertise food when there isn't any, but he just said there's supposed to be food each night there and didn't know why almost every vendor section was closed. But I got this out of my system at least. Again, I was really looking forward to a unique sounding seasonal event to enjoy, and I was embarrassed for my partner having to pay money to do nothing then we had to stop at a drive thru on the way home bcuz it was late and a...

My friend and I booked rooms at the Ben for a mini reunion. The greeting at the front door and reception desk was warm and welcome. Rooms and the hotel itself are very nice, clean. Beds were nice and comfortable etc. On our last day, we returned to the hotel after breakfast to retrieve our luggage and check out. As we approached my friends room, we realized the cleaning staff were in her room already. Despite the fact we had not checked out yet. Her backpack that was left in the room was missing. She asked them what they are doing in her room and where her belongings were. To which one of the two cleaning attendants replied in broken English and a defensive and dismissive manner that they don't know what she is talking about. The other one said they were told by the bell hop to clean the room. It didn't make sense. One of them left the room immediately and the other stayed and seemed to continue to shuffle cleaning supplies on her cart. Shortly after, a cleaning staff manager arrived and we explained the situation. I noted there was very minimal, if any, conversation between the manager and the cleaning attendants about the situation which I thought was rather odd. The manager just kept asking US questions about the missing luggage and telling us that they will locate them, that it was probably placed in a room downstairs. ??!! This is supposed to be a luxury 4 star hotel that should have a Lost and Found storage like most establishments. After another few minutes another manager showed up to deal with the missing luggage situation. Based on the interaction or lack there of between manager and staff it's evident there is a trust and loss prevention issue in general. Because they hardly made any enquiries with the cleaning attendants and stated to us they will review the camera footage to figure this out. My friend and I went down to the lobby - no use in hanging out at the room. We were not getting any indication the cleaning attendants were apologetic or concerned about the situation. After about 30 minutes, another staff member exited the elevator and handed us her back-pack. He made no eye contact and mumbled something about where they located it. To which I asked him to repeat what he had just said, because his words were indecipherable. He repeated what he said, but again avoiding any earnest effort of making himself heard or any kind of apology or comprehendible explanation. Absolutely bizarre!!! We just could not wait to get out of there. It's evident something is very wrong with this establishment and the people they employ. For a luxury boutique hotel in West Palm Beach, Florida, this experience was...