Modern urban hotel
Our first trip to San Francisco, and we booked three nights at Clift purely based on a wonderful experience at their sister hotel St Martin's Lane, London.
The ground floor of the hotel is very cool in decor. Fairly dark, the interior and furniture exudes decadence, luxury and a sense of 'boudoir'. Some might feel it is a bit too dark/clubby for their tastes.
From the moment our cab pulled up we were very well looked after from the front door, through to arrival at our room. The lobby, bar and restaurant are all on ground level and the look and feel as outlined above carries across all areas here.
We were very kindly upgraded for our honeymoon to one of their very large rooms on one of the upper floors. The room had a large seating area, huge bed, separate dressing room and bathroom. We had all the space that we needed but I somehow felt a little disappointed. This was due to the lack of design features within the room - there weren't any. I can't complain about the room being dirty or anything at all like that, it was in pristine condition. It just wasn't a 'design' hotel, which I had expected, and which is certainly the feel of the common areas downstairs, and definitely the case at St Martin's.
The team were very kind to send us up some complimentary champagne, which was a lovely thought. Couple of things lacking though - no in room tea/coffee making facilities, so we ended up paying $10 for one cup of tea. Clift is also guilty of charging for wifi usage. This is really unacceptable (although Clift aren't alone in doing this). If you must, hide it in my room rate so I don't feel like I'm being mugged every time I want to log on. But really, I would suggest that the room rate already more than covers it.
I wanted to love Clift, but sadly I didn't. The plain room, the ridiculously priced tea, as well as a breakfast for two coming in at over $70, the wifi charges - all left me a little disappointed. I can't fault the staff, they were lovely. It's the (Morgan's) system that let this place down.