Michael Martinez

Review of Carleton Hotel of Oak Park

I travel 80% of the year so I have a great chance ...

I travel 80% of the year so I have a great chance to see a range of hotels. The Carleton stands out but for the wrong reasons. To preface this review, I ordinarily don't write reviews unless I've had a terrific experience or an extremely lackluster experience. I've stayed at the Carleton twice, the most recent being last week. And it was a lackluster experience.
Positives:
-Great menu of TV channels (over 600)
-Nice vintage feel to the hotel and rooms. They're not fantastically modernized but that's okay because that's not their intended niche.

Negatives:
-Service. For 2 days I had no internet availability. Initially I thought my laptop had failed but realized this wasn't the case. For a businessperson no internet is incomprehensible with the level of work I do at night.
-Service. The restaurant (Poor Phil's I believe) service was terrible. The male bartender was too busy trying to be rico suave with the ladies than paying attention to my order. Terrible experience.
-Service. I just got off the phone with the hotel because I was trying to cancel next week's reservation in order to make a reservation elsewhere. The female on the other end was terrible--she made me feel like I was the one at fault because SHE couldn't find my reservation (even after I offered her the confirmation # from the hotel's website). In any case, that would have been fine except for the pure level of disrespect after the cancellation. She corrected me about the reservation and then just hung up on me. Not even a "have a good day" as I was about to say before I heard the dial tone. More unnerving is the fact that it was as though I was no longer a reserved customer that she felt it unnecessary to be polite anymore. I will NEVER stay at the Carleton again and will tell all visitors to the Oak Park facility I work at (there are many because it's one of the largest private companies in the world) to not even consider the Carleton.

The price point the Carleton charges demands supremely better service. I've stayed in glamour-less hotels with amazing customer service and had incredible experiences. A hotel like the Carleton which charges the amount it does and has the historical background should do a much, much better job providing the right level of service mentality to its clientele. There are too many hotels out there fighting to impress their customers that I can't give the Carleton a rating anything higher than 1.