Peninsula Chicago

100   Recommended
Superior room
November 1, 2009 by EXPERT

 Map | 6 Reviews | 83% Recommended
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The Peninsula Chicago
 Map | 6 Reviews | 83% Recommended

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Superior room

Liked:
Location
Service
Food
Amenities
Room
Stats
Room
Superior room

This is the first of several reports to come of our hotel stays in Chicago. I also plan to write one overview report comparing all 4 hotels we will be staying at. Our stay at the Peninsula Chicago was on the opening night of our first trip to the Windy City. Based upon travel reviews and the opinions on this forum, my expectations are extremely high. I hope you will enjoy reading my experience below.Overall, I liked this hotel. The service levels were very good overall but I did not feel the hotel blew me away. Nothing in particular stood out as outstanding, except for the arrival process, which was one of the best I have experienced. In some ways, I feel that in a few years time, I will forget about our stay here. Sometimes, I wonder if in the luxury hotel world that is actually a good thing -- that there was no particular excitement and things, on the whole, went smoothly. I also think that this is a negative at the same time. I think, bottom line: will I make tremendous effort to return to this hotel? No. Will I return to this hotel if the circumstances (read: the price is right) are right? Yes.

Vitals

We booked the Virtuoso rate for a Superior room and was upgraded, thanks to my Virtuoso agent, at time of booking to a Deluxe room. The Virtuoso amenities are: upgrade at check-in subject to availability; continental breakfast for 2 daily; early check-in and late check-out subject to availability; and, a $50 beverage credit at Avenues once per stay.

The Arrival

We had booked a car from O'Hare to the Peninsula through the hotel. While I knew we could cab it for much less the week prior to our departure was hectic and we knew we were tired so we thought we could travel comfortably. The drive was fairly quick and about 30 minutes later from departing O'Hare we were at the Peninsula. Outside waiting for us was a Guest Services Representative who greeted us by name and escorted us to our room for in-room check-in. With a credit card impression and a signature the formalities were complete and our luggage arrived as we were finishing up. Very smooth and I was certainly impressed by that aspect. The one minor slip up was that the hotel did not communicate the Virtuoso amenities to us in writing, or verbally, at all -- I had to double check with them myself to ensure all was set in place.

Room

Here is the room description directly from the Peninsula website:http://www.peninsula.com/chicago/en/...n/Deluxe_Room/ The room was about 500 sq ft (47 sq meters) and was of comfortable size for a one night stay. The decor was bland and I felt the furniture was mismatched to the decor. I did feel that the room was very comforting but also was very much international luxury hotel which means we could have this room could be transplanted in any city in the world and would fit in. The complimentary wi-fi and local calls is a great benefit and is much appreciated. I just wished the wi-fi speed was faster.

The bathroom is very functional and well thought out, like all Peninsula hotels. The shower pressure from the wall mounted shower head was very disappointing -- no amount of adjustment could get the flow of water to provide a refreshing shower. My sister ended up using the hand shower and found that to be more satisfying. The toiletries are Davi of Napa Valley and I always recall how much I dislike this brand. I wish they would upgrade the toiletries!!!

Reflecting more on the room, I thought the bed while comfortable enough was a little old and too well used. It was a little too soft to be truly comfortable. The linens and pillows were very nice.

It was interesting to see that through the bedside control one could control virtually every aspect of the room EXCEPT for opening the closing the curtains. The AC was very finicky as you could not set a particular temperature for the room. The controls were variations of fan speed and a range from very warm to very cool. I find these sorts of AC systems to be particularly frustrating as one cannot get the desired temperature on a constant basis -- it is too hot one moment and when you turn down the heat it gets way too cold. Because we were at the end of the hallway on the 12th floor we did not hear any noise from the hallway despite many rooms around us being occupied. However, there was quite a bit of noise bleed from the windows of the street (Superior and Rush) below us.

Dining

Sadly, the Pierrot Gourmet was a low point of our stay. The food and service were very disappointing and did not represent the standards one expects of Peninsula. We shared a large French Onion soup and while my sister had the chicken pesto tarte flambe, I had the Octoberfest special of leberkse (bavarian meatloaf) with mashed potato and sauerkraut. The leberkse was decent if not a tad salty overall. The mashed potato was tasty but the sauerkraut was pretty limp and boring and not very sour!! My sister's tarte flambe, which is a thin crust pizza, was very bland and fairly tasteless. The French onion soup was a disaster -- it was a thin and salty broth with a sprinkling of onions and a piece of french baguette toasted with a little cheese floating on top. The service was aloof and spotty at best. After a 20 minute wait after ordering the soup arrived. From that time nearly an hour passed before our main courses came out. Other people beside us who had arrived after us were nearly done. As a result we decided to skip dessert and just move on with our day. My assessment of the staff made me hold my comments until check-out as I did not feel my comments would have gone very far while at the restaurant. To be fair to the hotel, the Pierrot Gourmet Manager called me and removed the food bill from our folio, which was a much appreciated gesture.We were greeted and shown to our table quite efficiently. While we had continental breakfast as a part of the Virtuoso amenities we decided to upgrade to the breakfast buffet. The buffet was a compact but well constructed selection of breakfast items from the standard continental selection to the standard hot offerings. There were waffles and made to order eggs. I liked the cold cuts and cheese offerings but wished that they had smoked salmon. Theviennoiseriewas mixed -- thepain au chocolatwas quite good but the croissants were awful. The danishes and other pastries were good but not to the quality I expect of hotel like Peninsula. The service was professional and attentive but lacked warmth and friendliness. There was a lot of robotic and perfunctory "my pleasure", "of course", and "certainly." Overall, with a breakfast credit I would not mind dining here again. The eggs and hot items were tasty and the made to order omelette was great.

Overall

As I noted above our lunch at Pierrot Gourmet was comped due to the poor food and service. We also had a $50 beverage credit at Avenues and we were hoping to use it on Sunday. We then found out that Avenues is closed on Sundays. No proactive offer was made to use that credit elsewhere. Only when I asked was the matter referred to a Manager who kindly applied to our folio as a food and beverage credit. This flexibility was appreciated but I was puzzled why it was not proactively offered when one cannot use it on Sundays.

I was pleased with the bell service and I truly appreciated the fact that the staff never hovered for a gratuity. It was almost difficult to give them a gratuity which made me want to tip more than I usually do. Their graciousness is in SHARP contrast to what I experience often in Las Vegas.

One curiosity was that we never received evening turndown service. We did have the DND on as I was resting but here is an example where technology can cause larger problems. When the DND is on, the hotel tends to fax guests messages to the in-room fax machine. Only in our case, we never received the fax. We had gone out for dinner and the DND was turned off but Housekeeping continued not to disturb us. This lead to a miscommunication and the result was no turn down service. Once we returned and noticed that the room had not been turned down we then decided to keep the room the way it was.

The check-out was very smooth as was our departure. Although we were going to the Ritz Carlton the doorman did not tell the driver where we were headed next (despite him asking us where we were headed) and the tax driver did not seem to know where the Ritz Carlton was. We could have walked but feeling under the weather and with luggage we decided to cab to the next hotel. As expected the cabbie was quite upset as he drove to get such a low fare but when he received a 100% gratuity his attitude quickly changed.

As I mentioned above I think this is a solid hotel. I don't think one could go wrong with the Peninsula. If the price is right, I can see myself returning and I do feel that the Pen will improve on a future visit.

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