The Terrace Hotel Cincinnati

 

3

31

K J.

Murray, UT

10/6/2007

Inn-expensive.

Poor value for the money. I purchased my stay using Travelocity's low-cost option (JellyBean Sweet Rate) and got a rate of $80/night which compared favorably to other hotels much further away from the Duke convention center, where my meetings were in Cincinnati this trip.

No Internet access, poor to non-existent service, noisy, run-down, uncomfortable beds, no on-site parking and an unfriendly staff with plenty of excuses and few solutions.

The room itself didn't seem that bad until I laid down on the bed. It was one of those cheap, hard beds similar to what you get in a Mexican hotel. I thought, "Hey, for 2/3 the price of a nicer hotel I can put up with this for a few nights." Then I tried to get Internet access for my laptop. Hmmm, No Wi-Fi. I searched the sparse hotel info literature and found that it's Ethernet only. I looked all around  but couldn't find a cable. I called the number for the Internet service provider and they were pretty friendly and said they could call the hotel and have a cable sent to the room. Cool. And they did, pretty quickly too. However, the hotel staff man that delivered the cable, was only visible at the door long enough to hand off the cable and the he vanished without a word from his grumpy expression face. Then, I could get no signal or IP address or any response whatever from the service.  I noticed a few minutes later as I left the room to get a bite to eat that there were Ethernet cables poking down out of the ceiling all up and down the hallway. I don't think Internet service is a priority for this hotel or for the guests that frequent it.

After the 2nd night of my 4-night stay the room was only partially made up. One bed was made and one was not touched. There were fresh towels but the rest of the bathroom was not refreshed. No new coffee, or soap. When I made a call to Housekeeping they simply said, "we're understaffed," without offering to send any coffee or anything.

After night 3 the room was not serviced at all. I had to track down a hotel staff member in the hall and ask for towels. She asked how many were needed and I thought she might come in and pick up the used towels and maybe even make the bed. Instead she showed up at the door and with the same expression as the cable man she handed me a stack of towels and then turned and walked away.

The noise level was incredible for a downtown, high-rise hotel just a street away from the Hilton, Hyatt and Millennium hotels. The doors had no rubber pad or anything at all to soften the sound of the door closing. So, the sound of doors "slamming" all night long from all up and down the hall was evident. This budget hotel must cater to one-night stays for people coming to the football and baseball games in Cincinnati since when I checked out after night 4 the desk clerk did a double-take and even mentioned that it was very unusual for anyone to stay more than a couple nights at this hotel. The "party hard" crowd was certainly present at 2:30 am in the neighboring rooms.

As I was leaving the hotel on a Sat. night, there was a sad, unhappy family waiting in the hallway at the elevator for a pizza they said they had ordered over an hour ago. As I walked past the Valet men at the ground level there was a pizza sitting on a luggage cart. I asked about the pizza and both of the Valet men said, "oh it's been sitting there for a while, do you want it?"

I can guarantee  that I will never stay at the Terrace Hotel in Cincinnati again!

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Elite '09

53

141

Kristin R.

Chicago, IL

7/19/2007

Don't stay here. This hotel is awful and I would never stay here again upon a visit to Cincinnati.

This review has nothing to do with the staff. Most of them were very friendly and helpful, aside from one woman early in the morning who was very impersonal...no thank you or have a nice day...she just hung up. Rude? Yes. But, overall I'm happy with the quality of the staff.

The hotel itself? Yuck yuck and more yuck. The shower and bathtub are dingy looking. If I didn't feel like I had to take a shower to be presentable at my meetings than I may not have. Also, I HATED the fact that the nasty, slimy shower curtain was touching my bare skin. I know it's hard to defeat the laws of physics, (I know there's a very specific reason why the shower curtain blows inward as I learned about it in the 9th grade but simply can't remember) I couldn't help but get completely grossed out by the fact that I was touching this shower curtain! I eventually just put it on the outside of the tub and nearly flooded my bathroom with water. Oh well.

Also, there was no bath soap AND hand soap. Only one. So, I had to use the soap to wash myself and then pick it out of the shower when I needed to wash my hands after using the bathroom (yes I am 1 out of the 6 people that actually washes their hands after relieving themselves).  Oh and while we're still talking about showers/bathrooms, it took about...oh...a good 5 minutes for my shower water to heat up. Annoying.

Eh the sheets smelled dingy and smoky almost. And I had a huge problem with getting my internet working. It would work and then stop working and I'd have to call their wayport staff to troubleshoot, etc. What a pain! If I'm on a business trip, the last thing I want to do is deal with IT people trying to figure out why my lame hotel can't get their technology to work. The weird thing is I was the only person complaining! I think that tells you a lot about the kind of clientle that stay here....not too sophisticated if you know what I mean. Besides me, of course :)

Basically the next time I take a business trip, I won't feel bad about charging an extra 20-30 bucks on a decent place. Not worth the trouble or stress to stay in a place that's as low quality as this one.

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