Swank.com
Written: Aug 09 '03
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Extremely comfortable beds. Spacious well furnished rooms.
Cons: Annoying hipper than thou attitude.
The Bottom Line: Very luxurious, lackluster service and a poor location make this place very much a mixed bag.
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| konky2000's Full Review: W Silicon Valley, Newark |
You know you are in trouble when the receptionist answers your call to the front desk with "Wherever, Whenever, how may I direct your experience?"
A relic from the freewheelin' days of the .com era, this swankerific hotel, might be extremely luxurious, but feels completely out of place, now that the Silicon Valley is probably known more for its skyrocketing unemployment rates than its economic boom.
Not that this hotel is even located in Silicon Valley. The hotel is in Newark, which isn't really close to anything except possibly for Palo Alto and Stanford, both of which are a 20 minute drive across the Dumbarton Bridge.
What the hotel lacks in location, though, it more than makes up for with luxury and style. Beds are fitted with extremely comfortable feather beds and amply stuffed pillows that cradled my head like few pillows I have ever encountered.
Towels were soft and thick, and a terry cloth robe was awaiting me on a wooden hanger in the bathroom, which happened to have a bathtub AND a seperate shower stall.
Most impressive is that nothing feels gaudy or tacky. It has that classic modern look of a 1999 Banana Republic showroom. The room had a full velvet covered purple couch in it. A sturdy desk and a bigger than average hotel fridge stocked with tons of overpriced refreshments.
A microwave and coffee maker were accompanied by a sink, two plates, two bowls, silverware and enough kitchen cabinetery to hold an ample supply of any breakfast cereal you wanted to keep on hand.
The view from the room wasn't even all that bad. I had a view of the east bay hills, which in the summer are a classic California gold color.
My girlfriend happened to be staying at the hotel so she could do some business in Palo Alto. The hotel was being paid for by her company, but the company is big enough, and had enough people staying there that they were able to demand a price of $70/person per night (clearly WAY below the price that the hotel probably fetched in its heyday).
I was visiting, because we both happen to live only 20 miles away and it was fun for me to visit her on the weekend and spend a romantic weekend in such a luxurious hotel. We slept in, veged out with the giant 27" TV and ordered room service for breakfast, I had french toast she had eggs and bacon (total cost $25.00).
Had we not been natives of the Bay Area, we probably would have been sorely disappointed to be stuck so far away from any of the Bay Area's hot spots. Not only is San Francisco far in terms of mileage, but no matter how you cut it, you have to drive through some of the areas worst traffic to get there.
At least the Union City BART station is a 10 minute drive from the hotel, so you could get to SF via public transit if you had to.
Perhaps the biggest knock against the hotel, though, is that it seems consumed with finding unique ways of squeezing money from its guests.
One member of my girlfriend's group asked if it would be OK for him to remove all the items from his fridge so he could put his own stuff in. The hotel said fine, and the next day he found all the food from the fridge moved into the kitchen cabinets -- along with a bill for a $20 fee for the service!
Another 'service' is the delivery every morning of a newspaper to your room, which is then charged to your room if you don't take the paper down to the front desk and return it.
Other little details here and there are also lacking. For example the sugar has not be replenished in the coffee pot area, neither have the teagbags. In a list of videos available for rental puts 'Chinatown' down under the heading San Francisco, which is laughable.
I notice such fine details, because the hotel makes such pretentions of being this amazingly unique hotel 'experience.' It is the type of place that lists menu items as 'french toast 8.' You know, 8, as in $8.00. Somehow they think they are too good to resort to the crassness of using dollar signs?
Such pretention is a little hard to take after a while and keeps it from ever feeling like a home away from home.
Still, if you are booking a hotel for a business group and want to make sure people don't have too many distractions at night and feel like they are living in the lap of luxury, this is a good hotel.
For anybody else, though, I can't imagine any reason why someone would want to stay here except to revisit the heyday of Silicon Valley 1999.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
konky2000
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Member: Konky Two Thousand
Location: Oakland, CA
Reviews written: 66
Trusted by: 6 members
About Me:
30 year old web designer living in Oakland, CA
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