21c Museum Hotel Chicago

This hotel was great except for 2 issues. First and foremost, they weren’t ready for our 4:00 check in at 4:00. Seems to be a common problem after reading through other reviews. They told us they’d call us when the room was ready so we went next door for some drinks. An hour later they hadn’t called so we went back and stood in a long line where I heard them telling everyone that their rooms weren’t ready. A gentlemen told them he needed somewhere to change to get ready for something he had that night. Once I heard that it made me nervous. People have plans in situations like these. We’d already waited about 70 mins at that point. I get to the front of the line and and told her “yea we’re back trying to check in”. The lady was nice and just said “oh yes your room is ready”. No call, no text. I honestly think I could’ve spent the next week in the restaurant next door and never would’ve heard from them had we not wandered back in. Just don’t plan anything for your first night in Chicago unless you’re ok with changing clothes in the bathroom. Other complaint is they only have their breakfast bar on certain days apparently. We grabbed stuff from it Monday morning so I wander down Tuesday morning and…no breakfast bar. I started helping myself to some coffee that the day before was free and was told it wasn’t complimentary today. I asked what happened and she said they just reduced the days of their breakfast bar to where they don’t do it on Tuesdays. Minor complaint, but even Comfort Inn, Double Tree, and Bob’s Motor Inn put out free cheap coffee.

No prior notification of the works that are currently made at the hotel. Since understaffed service level is below average and waiting lines long. No recognition of Platinum status or other Accor benefits.

I had to ask multiple different times to get clean linen and towels from the young man who was working the front desk. He told me that he put our names down and never did. It was extremely frustrating to show a friend around the city and then come back to a room that hadn't been cleaned even after we begged for service. We also asked to extend our stay one night and it took the same front desk staffer over an hour to simply book a room. 21c is a cool spot but I will not be staying here again after this. I was upcharged on my rebooking of the extra night and the same staffer did not even try to get us a deal or ask about AAA or anything. He just charged us the max price. Even after we finally got that resolved we came back after dinner to find that our key cards no longer worked because the same guy forgot to update the key cards. The updating of key cards took another hour of our time as this employee is beyond incompetent and rude. It is customary in the hotel and dining business to try and remember customers faces and every time we approached him he acted as if this was the first time he met us, and we always had to re-explain ourselves to him. The rest of the staff is fantastic but this gentleman absolutely ruined our stay. Please consider removing him from your staff.

Nice rooms and location. However, issues with management. Showed up at around 5:30pm after first seeing if any availability earlier around 2pm. Said they would call me when room ready, check in not until 4, no problem. Got no call and when showed up to check in, they had to “find” me a room even though well past check in time. I reserved thru the hotel a deluxe 2 queen bed room. Get to room and clearly is 2 double bed room. Immediately realized this due to size of beds just visually, my kids sleep in double size beds, I know their size. Go down to front desk and inform and they tell me no, it’s a double queen. Computer says so. One person even has audacity to say that double beds are actually size of twins and queens are the size of doubles? So why does the hotel website clearly offer 2 double bed rooms and 2 double queen rooms? They should be labeled 2 twin bed rooms and 2 double bed rooms then. How silly is this? And what hotel has 2 twins in a bedroom? Anyway I go back and forth and they even tell me the beds have been measured and they are correct since someone mentioned samething previous week. So I accept and go to take a shower and shower head is not working. Go back down and say need another room. Get put in another room that has 2 “queen” beds and clearly they are larger actual queen beds!? Went back downstairs to inform. There is a measuring application on phone we used and beds clearly longer and wider by at least six inches. Originally in room 514 that had fake size queen beds and moved to room 1004 which was supposedly same size beds but not, they were larger and actual queens. This is completely unnecessary to have to deal with and have this discrepancy among the staff/computer system as to what a double bed room is and what a queen size bed is. I think they tried to pull a fast one on me and give me a 2 double bed size room. And the silliness to tell me that it’s a queen is a joke. I must say the supervisor was understanding and accommodating. But even she was confused about. Please take your hotel staff to both rooms listed and show them the difference easily seen visually along with a measuring tape. There’s a reason you have the different types of rooms listed on website.

Room was not ready at check in and staff did not care. There was a line of 15 other people whose room also wasn’t ready. They said they’d call but never did so we stopped by 90 mins post checkin and got our room. Customer service severely lacking! Tons of other hotels around— I will take my business elsewhere to someone who values my business. It seems like norm to not have the room ready which is crazy since checkin is already at 4.