A grand hotel that lacks attention to detail
As a starter it is not easy to find four star plus hotels in Memphis (albeit interestingly there are quite a number of very good restaurants in town). Our first choice hotel - The Riverside Inn- was busy and so The Peabody was second choice and recommend by a work colleague. Starting with the positives. It has a spacious and imposing lobby and the bedrooms are equally spacious ( but strangely with so much space the bathrooms are tiny with only half baths and overhead shower). The concierge team are helpful as was one of the bellboys( Justin I think). It also has a cute tradition of having a number of ducks who " live" in the lobby fountain during the day and are escorted to and from the roof each morning and evening. This is quaint and draws in the tourists. Get there early (11.00 and 5.00 arrival and departure). The not so good though outweighs the positives. Valet service is poor - long waits and one rather overweight boy after fetching my car watched while I lifted two heavy cases in to my car. I was astounded. Although you can order fresh omelette on the buffet breakfast the rest was pathetically poor more in line with a value chain offering. Service when it arrived was pleasant but on our first morning I had to chase around to get a waiter to come to our table despite at least six "milling around". The room as I say is spacious but has no in room fridge (I normally expect a stocked fridge and at the very least an empty fridge that can hold chilled water etc), the safe is so thin it barely holds a wallet. The room was clean but over the three days we were there rubbish and used glasses were not adequately cleared. For such an old and imposing building the walls are not very thick hence if you have noisy neighbours as we did one evening it is not conjusive to a restful night. It is clearly a " conference" hotel. One final point that was disappointing. Apparently at this time of year many restaurants have special lower priced menus resulting in at least two of the hotels we wanted to eat at being fully booked. The hotels main restaurant was also fully booked and I would have appreciated this being communicated in advance by the hotel. I paid the same price for this hotel as I did for The Hutton in Nashville which is a LHW and there is no comparison with The Hutton winning hands down.