Overrated, overpriced, needs BIG improvements!
I have been staying at The Drake for a long time, since I was a child. I would come here often with my family during the Holiday season and I only have wonderful memories from those times at the Drake... and sadly the hotel seems to have lost all of its charm. Where do I start? First of all in 100 plus degrees temperatures outside, you expect your hotel room to be able to get cold. Our room at the Drake never could really get cold (we had to go purchase a standing fan from CVS , b/c the fan they gave us looked like it was from the 80s), making sleeping a challenge. My parents stayed at the Drake earlier this summer and had the same complaint. The first day after my husband and I returned from our day at around 6:30pm our room had not been cleaned. We had dinner reservations shortly and we needed to take showers so I called housekeeping to see if they could have our room made up once we left at 8pm and if they could bring up some clean towels in the mean time. It took me 4 CALLS to housekeeping to get them to bring up fresh towels. My husband also wanted his shoes polished (for a wedding we were going to) and b/c they were brown, they said they could not polish them, that they could only polish black shoes. I mean come on, for this caliber of hotel they should be able to polish brown leather shoes. Upon checkout, we had a lot of luggage and we called up for a cart and bellmen to help us, and it literally took 1 HOUR for someone to come up, after my husband called numerous times. The man who ended up coming up seemed very apologetic but an hour is unacceptable. Also for a day and a half our cable was out (they said it was an area problem). We were really looking forward to catching some of the Wimbledon match so that was a disappointment. Instead of maybe offering us free internet or some complimentary dvds, the hotel offered nothing. And this brings me to another point... any hotel that charges for internet should be ashamed of themselves. I mean if Starbucks can offer free wireless, so can The Drake ( I can't remember the last hotel, besides The Drake, that had me pay for wireless)... its $12.99 a day!!! So ridiculous. Also to park your car a day at valet is $55/day. I would say our rooms were clean and the king size bed was comfortable. Our neighbors were smoking pot, which made our room smell so we had to request that they toke up elsewhere. This hotel needs to enter the modern era, offering guests free wireless at the very least and work on having better guest services (like not having to call 4 times for clean towels). I used to love this hotel and now it's just sad to see what it's become. Hilton really needs to a do better job here. Others hotels really work at making guest happy (the small things.. offering a chocolate chip cookie when you arrive, complimentary wine, free bottled water on a hot day, ) and the Drake seems like they aren't concerned with really going the extra mile for their guests, and a historic hotel like the Drake should know better.