For my first trip to Chicago in over ten years, my wife and I left our fate to a name-your-price travel website and ended up at the W Hotel Lakeshore. We enjoyed the W for its location and all the things that it did right, but there were several drawbacks that were hard to overlook. Perhaps were we in our mid-20s (which is likely the population segment to which the hotel is marketed), we would not have left asking for anything more

Very late on a weekday evening, we disembarked from the airport shuttle in the hotel driveway. A throng of activity awaited. Hotel employees, guests, and patrons of the lobby bar zipped around us to the throbbing beat of ultra-hip music emanating from inside the hotel. Across the street, Lake Michigan rolled away into the darkness in near silence.

We pulled up to the front desk, and a cheerful employee checked us in. As she finished up, I asked her whether the music – now incredibly loud given that we were standing very close to the bar – ever got to her. She leaned over the counter and practically screamed in my ear: “No, I actually love it!” I couldn’t actually hear the rest of what she said, but I think it had something to do with the fact that other hotels in Chicago are much less exciting to work at.

From there, we walked over to the elevator bank. There were four elevators leading up to the rooms, but each of them seemed to have a mind of its own. Throughout our stay, there would always be a wait for the elevators, no matter what time of day or night. As we got onto the elevator, we were joined by a young woman and a separate group of rowdy 20-something-year-old guys. The guys greeted the girl with predictable Joey Tribbiani-like enthusiasm.

We got off on our floor and headed to our room. We couldn’t hear the music from the lobby anymore, but the hallway was lit up in such a way that it resembled a night club. There was colored light everywhere -- and enough of it that you could see -- but it was very dark at the same time. It is a little difficult to describe, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it in a hotel. Mounted on the walls were carefully laid out rows of empty egg shells hung in frames. One eggshell in one piece was cracked, and I wondered whether this was intentional or if some drunk partygoer had accidentally slammed into the artwork.

We found our room by reading the room number printed on the carpet in front of our door and made our way inside. The room was very inviting, and I instantly appreciated the effort that must have gone into its decoration. The room was designed like it were featured on one of those shows on HGTV. It was pretty small, but the room seemed to have been designed to hide that fact or at least distract your attention from it. There was a very large and comfortable bed, a chaise by the window and a very long black wooden desk that triples as a TV stand and snack bar. There were some small drawers built into the coat rack (which was concealed by a curtain). If you opened some of the drawers, you could not open the door to the hallway. The window had a double set of shades: one that was perforated and, behind it, the conventional white canvas type. The walls were white so they made the ceiling (black-painted stucco) pop. I really liked the look of it all.

Like the room itself, the bathroom was well decorated. However, it was extremely small and did not afford much privacy. This was not a problem because I was sharing it with my wife, but other guests may have found this to be a little disconcerting. All that separated it from the bedroom were a sliding wooden door with no lock and a pair of window shutters. The shower stall itself was very unique. It had an oversized shower head that sprayed the water directly downwards in a 90 degree angle to the floor. There was no barrier between the shower stall and the rest of the bathroom except for a very narrow pane of glass that protected the toilet. Again, something I had never seen before.

We went down to the lobby to find something to eat. The music was still roaring, but the crowd by the bar had thinned out somewhat. We went to the restaurant adjacent to the bar, and the hostesses directed us to the tables outside. We came across a long row of tables running alongside the hotel and sat down. After a few minutes, we had enough of the cigar smoke from a neighboring table and moved down the row. Not too long afterwards, we ordered our cheeseburgers and sank our teeth into our late night meal. The food really hit the spot.

The next morning, we headed down to the same restaurant for coffee and breakfast. As we waited for the elevator, we looked out onto Lake Michigan and Navy Pier and chatted with the friendly hotel staff. We sat down at the restaurant and worked on our laptops, which we connected to the Internet through the free wireless service. It was a peaceful yet productive morning. When we got back up to the room, however, that all ended as we were overcome by the incredibly loud sound of metallic clanging. Apparently, there was some construction being done to the facade of the hotel – which we would have learned about the night before if we had taken the time to read the letter from the general manager sitting on the table. The racket continued unabated for hours.

We stayed in Chicago for another day and a half. On our last morning, we dropped our bags with the bellhop and took the short walk over to Navy Pier and then Magnificent Mile. When we got back to the hotel, a young lobby employee greeted us with a smile and got our bags for us. I noticed him from before because he and the other employees made it a point to open the door for you whenever you walked into the hotel, which I thought was a nice touch. He hailed a taxi waiting at the curb and, as he was loading our bags into the taxi, I asked him how much he thought it would be to O’Hare. He said about $45 and then added with an air of caution that we should try to negotiate a flat fee. I asked him if he wouldn’t mind doing the negotiating for us. Without a word, he leaned into the open window of the taxi and talked to the driver for us. The driver offered a flat fee of $40. The employee handed us a business card with another smile, warmly shook our hands and sent us off on our long trip home.


Recommended: Yes