Hotel Review: Hilton Chicago O'Hare Airport

Arrival isn't great - you come through a strange underground path from the airport, picking your way past the buskers and panhandlers. Eventually, you'll find an uphill slope to struggle up, and an entrance way.

The entrance way seems incredibly insecure - no sign of any hotel staff there, which given it opens onto the warren of tunnels connecting ORD with outside isn't great; what makes it worse is the horrible signage. There's a bank of lifts, with a sign 'Check-in on Lobby Level" and another sign saying "LL". So this is Lobby Level, right?

Um, no - it turns out after you've walked the length of the floor that "LL" actually means Lower Level, Lobby Level is identified by an L. The sign inside the lift tells you this - but couldn't the sign outside the lift be a little clearer?

Once you're out the lift, you have to continue plodding past some sort of sub-souk area flogging geegaws and trinkets before you get to the check-in desk.

To the hotel's credit, check-in was fast (once we'd made it there) and friendly enough.

Inside, the hotel is in desperate need of a refit - there's parts of the floor where the carpet is lying over what feels like chipboard put down over a hole; the common area decoration is stuck in the brown and gold era of the 1970s. It's clean enough, but just tired.

The room itself was fine, comfy, and two complementary waters were welcome.

Trouble was, it was roasting hot. We fiddled with the thermostat (also appeared to be 1970s vintage) but couldn't get the room any cooler, so rang the desk. The desk were quite snitty, snapping that it was below 50F outside and so the hotel only had heat on - the system is so out-of-date apparently all rooms either get heat, or cooling, but can't have both. He suggested we'd be better off switching off the fan and then that we open the window. (Oddly, the hotel had decided it was so cold outside it needed to have the heat on, but wasn't thinking it was too cold to have the window open).

The window only opened full or not at all, and was knee-to-floor height, but anything was better than the cookie-bake heat otherwise. It did mean we only got fitful sleep as the sounds of the airport and roaring wind hammered in through the window all night, though.

Seriously: a 700 room hotel that expects *all* its guests to either want heat or cooling?

The location, though, is excellent - up early for the flight, but not as early as we'd have to have been if we'd been on another 'airport' hotel. Quick tip, though: don't go outdoors to get to the terminal, as the surfaces on the roads and pavements are dreadful; you'll find your trolley keeps getting wedged and tipping over.

In addition, they ding you for the cost of USA Today - you can say no at check in, but they don't tell you until you get your check-out summary. We paid 75cents for a paper on a day they weren't even publishing. A mean little trick.

Also mean: if you order in-room breakfast, you have to pay 18% as a "gratuity" (shouldn't the size of a gratuity - if any - be down to the customer? Otherwise it's a service charge); then there's a 4% admin fee, and then on top of that another $5 in-room dining fee. It's not clear what the in-room dining fee covers that the gratuity doesn't, or what the admin fee is and how that differs from an in-room dining fee. I don't mind the idea that you have to pay to have yo ur food brought to your room, but the idea of paying three times to have the food brought up seems a bit extreme. Have your breakfast once you're at the airport.

[cross-posted from Tripadvisor]

Hotel Review: Doubletree ORD (Rosemont, Chicago)

To be fair to any and all airport hotels, most of your clientele are going to be folded up and grumpy by the time they arrive, and the threatening and unfriendly underpasses you have to scramble through - avoiding the fake taxi dudes, the panhandlers and buskers - to get to the shuttle at ORD aren't the fault of the hotel.

However, the printed literature for the hotel promised a shuttle every ten minutes. That has now been cut to an almost worse-than-useless two an hour (admittedly, the website now admits this). You're looking at a $20 taxi ride otherwise.

I know times are tough, but this cutting back of the shuttle just chips the value off the edge of the stay. Not only do you have to stand in the chill of the night waiting for twenty-five minutes for the drive to the hotel, but the courtesy bus is groaning and takes ages to load up and unload.

Almost an hour to get to the hotel doesn't really make it count as an airport hotel in any strict sense of the word.

At night, the drive to the Doubletree feels like you're being taken through the backstreets of a Soviet-era Russian bureaucatic city centre. Daylight makes it look less unwelcoming, so if you do stay here but arrive at night, you'll need to suspend your feelings that you're about to be dumped in a gulag.

The driver, naturally keen to get on, unloaded our bags into the road - which meant they were piled in front of a limo which still had its engine running. No sign of anyone offering to help with them. In the end, I wander into the hotel and duck into the concierge room to get a trolley. It's only as I'm coming out that someone appears - "d'you want a hand?" It's too late by now, though.

The check-in team were very good, but I was already frazzled and probably less gracious than I could have been when presented with a free cookie and free water - 4am start tomorrow, and between the wait for the shuttle and the fruitless wait for help with the bags we'd already burned through an hour we could have been sleeping.

The room was brilliant, comfy bed, lots of pillows, felt clean and bright. There was a view over the city from the end of the corridor - during the day it'd probably look glorious.

Early start, rushing for the shuttle, call for help with bags. Wait ten minutes. Nothing. Call down. "Oh, there's only one man on today, and he's very busy" - understandably, with only one shuttle every thirty minutes, everybody is going to want to go at the same time.

So, arrival and departure was a bit grotty, and the conveniences you really need in an airport hotel were flops. But the hotel itself and the staff who were at their post were excellent.

Previously, we'd stayed at the Sheraton Gateway at ORD; on balance, I think that one edges over the Doubletree - but wouldn't rule out a return.

[Written for, and submitted to Tripadvisor]

Hotel Review: Chicago Sheraton Gateway Suites

After the shambolic Sheraton Heathrow, the Chicago Airport branch of the same hotel chain was a bit of a faith-restorer.

The shuttle was prompt; the driver friendly. The hotel offers a view across to the city - although this is an airport hotel, you can nip into Chicago proper fairly easily by cab; beware suggestions you should take the shuttle back to the airport and get the train into town - it's cheap, and a great way to see Chicago's guts, but it'll eat a couple of hours out of your day in both directions. If you're hoping to squeeze a day in Chicago out of changing your planes, you'll need a cab in at least one direction.

Clean hotel; friendly staff; a bright, airy feel to the public areas. The rooms are arranged around the edge of an almost-courtyard like atrium, with glass lifts zipping you to your floor and back. There appeared to be ice machines and drinks dispensers on each floor; there was also a really well-stocked little shop, and it's nice to have a little shop.

We didn't stay here long, but I could have happily spent a week.