The Emily Hotel

My wife and I have very mixed feelings about the Emily. We stayed at the Emily this last weekend for my best friends' wedding. The location is fantastic and located close to a lot of great restaurants and bars. The lobby is absolutely beautiful. We dined at the restaurant and the coffee bar and had great experiences. The front desk attendant was pleasant and very accommodating. Our positive feelings about the location and everything mentioned above contrast greatly to our opinion of our room and the hotel lounge/bar upstairs. The room was very clean and quiet, but pretty awful otherwise. We stayed in a "luxury king" room. The decor looks like a trendy hostel. The bed looks like it was taken from a hospital room in the 50's and all the furniture was made from plywood with a high polish veneer. The ceilings were concrete and made to look like painted black plywood. Complete with pieces of tape and the chalk writing from where they marked where the electrical went. The closet was made from plywood painted black with hardware store organization pegboard serving as the closet door. Nothing about the room said "luxury" and was in stark contrast to the impressions we had when entering the lobby and dining in the restaurant downstairs. We went to the upstairs lounge bar on Saturday night with our friends from the wedding. The hostess was incredibly rude and treated us as if we were unwelcome and not good enough to be in that area. The bartender was great, but the bar manager closed the bar an hour early citing that "she was short staffed and was closing early because she couldn't keep running around being a bar back, busser and manager". As someone that worked in restaurants for 20 years, I found her to be rude and couldn't see any valid reason why they would close an hour early. I felt for the bartender because he was pretty upset they were closing early and it directly hurt how much money he was going to earn that night. The only saving grace is that we got a discounted block rate with the wedding party. I would never stay at the Emily again and pay the normal rate. As it is, I still cringe knowing that we paid the amount that we did. There were other hotels throughout that same district that offered much better rates and rooms that were far more to my liking.

The staff at check in and out were very friendly. When we checked out they offered to keep our bags and allowed us to keep our car in the garage until 3:00. We were given complementary water and they suggested a perfect place for lunch. When we returned, the valet, Leo, was very kind an helpful. Again we were offered more water for our trip. I would gladly stay at this hotel again.