Steve Graff

Review of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worl...

Unless you are prepared to be up all night with th...

Unless you are prepared to be up all night with the 20-something party crowd. This is not a hotel, it is a nightclub with a couple of hundred private after-hours clubs attached. My wife and I stayed at the W (half of) one night to have a night on the town and then a good night's sleep away from a 2 month-old baby. We are not 50-something fuddy-duddies, we are fun-loving 30-somethings, but when the fun is over, we need to get some peaceful sleep. I guess that makes us adults.

My wife and I have been to four W hotels (Chicago, Seattle, Honolulu, and now Dallas), and they have all been fun, friendly, hip experiences. The W Victory turns the corner at hip and sophisticated and veers deep into obnoxious and vulgar. The noise level outside our room peaked shortly after 2:00 am, when the club (Ghost Bar) closed, and the party began in our adjoining room. We called management to complain, and our complaints were met with lukewarm promises to "issue warnings". A few calls later, we were connected to the manager on duty, who told us that the loud drunken behavior is to be expected that time of night, and there was really nothing he could do. That's it. Par for the course. Thank you, drive through. Now, to be fair, we were offered a transfer to the Westin hotel, or a change to another room. At 2:30 a.m., neither was a sensible option, so we simply went home.

My years in Daytona Beach, during its peak as a spring break destination, should have prepared me for the spectacular nightclub aftermath that we trudged through on our way out of the hotel. The clientele of the W/Ghostbar behaved no better than thousands of drunken frat boys and bikini babes on a beach screaming vulgarities and puking beer on each other. On the floor of the elevator foyer across from our room, there were strung-out musician types having loud, incoherent whiskey-fueled discussions with a tweaking nymphette... something about about which gospel singers have real chops, black or white? There were vacant-eyed teeny boppers in go-go boots and mini-dresses looking for their friends, long departed. There was what appeared to be a Russian prostitute sitting on the steps in the lobby, crying softly to herself. There were drunken wanna-be hipsters tripping over my rollaboard. There were four police cars across the street, the officers mopping up the remains of some tragedy that I'm sure we will read about in Monday's paper. There was, however, nobody at the front desk to handle our checkout. Even the doorman couldn't believe this.

The question needs to be asked: were the nightlife casualties intruding on our pleasant night's sleep, or had we wandered innocently into their domain, looking for something that was not ever intended to be found? Only the W management team know for sure. If the answer is, in fact, the latter, then for the sake of truth in advertising, the moniker "hotel" needs to go.