Steven Howse

Review of W Minneapolis - The Foshay

I stayed at this hotel, The Grand Hotel, and Hotel...

I stayed at this hotel, The Grand Hotel, and Hotel Ivy all in the same week. Hotel Ivy is the best by far. You need to go to Hotel Ivy. DO NOT go The Foshay. When reaching to open the door to enter The Foshay, I was harassed by a mentally ill individual on the sidewalk who threatened to kill me if I did not give him money. What a fantastic greeting. Where is the security here? You really can't put one person at the door to prevent this? There were two employees just sitting around inside who were absent-mindedly watching me deal with this and they also watched me struggle to open the heavy doors with one hand to bring in my luggage with the other hand all by myself. I'm not sure what these two employees are paid to do. They sit right by the entrance and presumably they were supposed to at least help me with the door but they did nothing. They were probably too engrossed in whatever website or netflix show they were distracted by. The room is a lot smaller than their dishonest fish eye lens photos would have you believe. You know how you just assume every hotel room on the planet has a bathtub so you don't think to look for it in the amenities list? Oops, looks like you just checked into the world's only hotel that has no bathtubs. Enjoy your standup shower whose door doesn't even fully close. The mattresses are lumpy and uncomfortable and squeak, they look and feel like a used bargain bin mattress you'd find at Salvation Army and Goodwill. I know that sounds unbelievable but I'm dead serious. While booking, if you asked yourself why they feel the need to describe their rooms as "wonderful" and "amazing" etc, the answer is that they're using this colorful language to overcompensate for the fact that their rooms are actually complete trash. The main power strip was dangling from the wall rather than sitting flat on the floor. The beds were sloppily made. The AC fan repeatedly kicks on and off with a loud noise, even when you set it to ALWAYS ON. Why even claim to offer an "always on" setting if it isn't going to work? How hard is it to get these little things right? Seriously? This is supposed to be a hotel, not dilapidated section 8 housing or a college freshman dorm. After taking one look at this disastrous room, I asked to check out immediately and figured I'd just be required to pay for one night, just like any other hotel on the planet would do. No, they told me they were still going to charge me for the full five nights booked... and then they acted deeply offended when I changed my mind and decided to get my money's worth by keeping the reservation, since I was being forced to pay for it against my will anyway. Truly an astonishing mix of greed and utter incompetence. I've traveled a lot and never heard of a hotel doing that in my life. I already wrote a review for this hotel before but they censored it somehow. This means they are apparently somehow hiding all of the negative reviews, which means you can't actually trust the positive ones at all. I cannot stress enough how important it is that you DO NOT GO HERE and that you instead go to Hotel Ivy. Google urgently needs to step in and manually tweak the star ratings for these three hotels. The Foshay needs 2.5 stars, The Grand Hotel needs 3.5 stars, and Hotel Ivy needs 5 stars. I am probably the only one on earth qualified to say that with absolute certainty, unless you can find some other person who has stayed at all three of those hotels in a one week period.