Fairmont San Francisco

Writing a bad review for a Fairmont hotel comes as a shock for me as a Diamond member and a supporter of the brand. However this stay at the San Francisco Fairmont felt like I was staying in badly managed MOTEL not a 5 star Hotel.... The number of let-downs from poor service to rudeness of staff is incalculable. Never again will I stay at this hotel which is a shame as the building and its history deserve better.

What an overpriced disappointment. The rooms are super dated and in poor repair. The heat didn’t work. You can’t close the curtains. There are stains on the carpet. The bed is hard as a rock. There’s no sound proofing. The food was not just bad - it was like airplane food but dinner for one cost $75. Overcooked pasta, tea, and a a dessert. Outrageous. I’ve seen better gyms at motels. It didn’t feel clean and I was relieved to check out. How the mighty have fallen.

First, when we arrived on the evening of October 28th, we were told that our reservation could not be located. I originally booked the stay on October 8th, by calling the hotel directly, and I received a confirmation email and everything. Resolving this matter took about 20 minutes of the front-desk employee consulting with a manager, after which a new, manual reservation was made for us (thankfully, the hotel wasn't at full occupancy...). Then, when we finally got our reservation settled and received the room keys, we attempted to enter our room and encountered a problem with the door lock. I went back down to the front-desk, and was issued new keys and told to try again. The new keys were again unsuccessful. When I went back down to the front-desk, I was told they had recently replaced the door locks and that I should try with new keys once more. This time, they offered to have the bellhop escort me up. Again, for a third time, the new keys were unsuccessful, and the bellhop's master key was also unsuccessful. The bellhop told me they needed to contact the maintenance team to come change the locks, and that they were uncertain how long it might take for them to arrive. I went down to the lobby, at which point I encountered several other guests complaining about the same issue. We waited and consulted with the front-desk employees, and finally, after about 45 minutes, the issue was resolved. By this time, it had been over an hour since we first arrived at the hotel and tried to check-in, and we had a dinner reservation that we were now running extremely late for. In fact, we ended up having to skip the dinner altogether and change our plans. Not exactly the birthday night I had envisioned. After getting settled into the room, I went back down to the front desk to voice my frustrations with the check-in process. Up to this point, no offer had been made to make up for our frustrating experience at check-in. The employee at the front desk expressed their apologies and told me that in addition to granting a request for late check-out, that I would also receive complimentary overnight parking. Consider me surprised, then, when I received the invoice and saw there was a charge for overnight parking for $112.50. I would not have ever valeted my car if I had known I would be charged such a fee. The issues at check-in are one thing, but it feels awfully deceptive to be offered some sort of reconciliation that isn't followed up on.

My husband and I went for our 20 year anniversary. We got a deal, so at least we didn't pay the usual $500 but I was astounded at how bad the room was. The mattress had both our backs in pain the next day. There was only the most basic of cable stations. There was no wireless charging, and they didn't have a service or a way to charge phones other than an outlet anywhere in the hotel. The shower was a low-pressure disappointment fest. Then, the worst: the pillows. The pillows ALL had these bizarre hard lumps throughout. I ordered more pillows to be sent to our room but they never arrived. So we had to sleep (poorly) on this hard mattress with lumpy pillows that woke both of us up all night. I get that we received a good deal for the night, but this is NOT the service I would expect from a standard room at a place like the Fairmont. Will never be staying there again.

Overall, it was not as special a wedding hotel experience as we would have hoped for at SF City Hall and Fairmont. Young couples go elsewhere, they will judge based on appearance. Everything emailed as promises did not really happen.