The Royal Sonesta Washington DC, Dupont Circle

Has a truly terrible experience at this hotel, made a complaint and they offered by points. What good are they when you never want to stay in a Sonesta hotel ever again. Paid the hotel to stay in a good room, they overbooked and moved us to a very low class hotel. ten minutes away in a taxi that we had to pay ourselves. Now they will not refund the difference in the room costs. They have not even looked into the issues that went wrong. Flooded bathroom that I had to clean up myself, water coming though electrics, not concerned they were going to electrocute us!!!! Complete lack of interest. Very rude staff on reception, made us feel like it was our fault they overbooked the hotel.

Pros - - Comfortable, clean room - Friendly front desk, responsive to the one concern about the toilet quickly - Great neighborhood and location; wonderful nightlife, but not crazy, just good vibes all around. As a solo female traveler I felt safe walking at night and safe at the hotel Cons - - I submitted two queries on the form they want you to use for such things on their website. I submitted one months before my trip and one the first day of my trip. I never got a response to either. - They tack on a $35 per night destination fee. It covers plenty of things you don't want. One of the queries I submitted above was asking them to remove that. It amounted to over $200 in charges for my six night stay. This fee is NOT a DC tax of any kind. It is simply a way to gouge customers for more money. They tell you that you get a $15 credit in their restaurant per day as part of the "perks" of that $35 per day. I did not care to eat at their restaurant so even if they just refunded me $15 x 6 for my stay, we are looking at $90. This practice is so scammy that I hope everyone looking to stay at the Royal Sonesta reads this. You may still book, obviously, but go in knowing what they are doing. - The entire block lost power for one of the days of my stay. That is obviously not the hotel's fault! However, here is my experience: I woke up and realized there was no power. Of course the phones did not work and there was no other communication, such as a note put under the door, to let me know what was going on. I looked out the door - PITCH BLACK - no emergency lights of any kind. A few young guys with their cell phone flashlights were walking by with coffee; they told me the hotel hoped the power would be back on within the hour (it was about 7am at this point). Since I planned on being out the whole day anyway, I got ready and left. Thankfully the elevators were working (they were also lit) - I was on the 9th floor. The hotel did have plenty of staff on hand in the lobby and were also handing out free water bottles (or maybe they were part of my $35 'destination fee' - little joke). I was kind of floored at how dark the hallways were outside guest rooms; I'm talking you can't even see your hand in front of you. They should seriously consider installing emergency lighting. Honestly, I hate giving this 2 star review. I did enjoy my stay, and this is a nice and comfortable property. However, they don't respond to questions via their own system, they engage in scammy "destination fees" that tacked on, in my case, over $200 to my bill for almost nothing in return (I say almost because I did drink the water bottles they left in my room each day, which they claim is covered by that fee - most expensive water.I've ever had, but otherwise I wasn't getting anything it was supposed to "cover"), and they need to reassess their emergency communication and systems. One final note - they respond to negative reviews on here with vague promises of doing better. You may note that if you read through the reviews. If you look closely, their language in those responses is pretty broad, at least, I think it is. They want the credit of responding without making any real change. I always look to see if a company has responded to a customer's complaint, and they do, but there's no "there," there - no real substance to their response.

I stayed at the hotel in November last year. I booked three months in advance and got what I considered to be a very good value for the price. Looks like reception desk was at the end of their shift as it lack of smile.

I used the hotel with a group and the banquets staff were very kind and helpful, and the food was excellent! The front desk staff (specifically Ray and Elias) were fantastic, so friendly, helpful and always had a smile on their faces! Very comfortable beds and spacious rooms, great for a team! The only downside was the power outages that happened during our stay (but these were outages for the whole surrounding area, not hotel specific), but outside of that the stay was excellent!

The location is great and the rooms we had were decent but this was all spoiled by hidden “destination fees” which over the 3 nights equated to $243 for our two rooms. This practice needs to stop as it’s just a way for RS to advertise cheap rooms then add on more cost when it’s too late for guests to do anything about them. The experience we had with the reception team was mixed. Not as friendly as it should be and the information provided on hotel amenities was non-existent. The rooms were cleaned every day but not until very late afternoon when we had already returned from our days out. Not terribly inconvenient but we would have preferred them to have been serviced before we returned. Check-out was disappointing as well. No explanation of charges that would be applied and I had to request a copy of our invoice (which turned out to be incorrect). Fix these issues (which shouldn’t be hard) and I would recommend this hotel but not as it stands.