Review: The Nines hotel in Portland Oregon

TL;DR – The hotel is like a hot girl who knows she’s hot – she’s just not going to put in a lot of effort.

Introduction

Yesterday, I wrote about our Amtrak trip to Portland.  I decided to stay at The Nines (an SPG Luxury Collection hotel) because it was centrally located and probably the “nicest” points hotel in Portland.  I know the Kimpton hotels are also very popular in Portland.  Let me forewarn you – this review won’t be all roses.  My expectations are a lot higher in fancy hotels like this.

 

Booking the hotel

Apparently there is a low and a high season for this hotel.  Since I was going in June, this was the high season and therefore, would have been 16K points a night (12K points a night in low season.)  However, there were no standard awards available and so I called in to SPG.  When I called in, the rep told me I could get an upgraded king room for 17450 points a night.  I felt that was reasonable over the 16K standard award, and so booked 3 night.  The rooms were going for over $400 a night after fees, so I felt this was also a good redemption of SPG points.  For the record, I booked it mainly because I wanted to splurge on the getaway with the wife and not due to the value of the hotel.  If it was $200 a night, I still would have used the points.… I think.

 

Location

The location of the hotel is excellent.  As a shopaholic, I love it when a hotel is attached to a shopping mall (or across the street to one in this case.)  There are also metro and bus stops near the hotel as well.  The only downside is that you do see quite a number of homeless people near the hotel, especially at night.

Inside the hotel, the lobby is on the 8th floor.  Departures, the rooftop bar, is on the 15th floor.  Our room was on the 8th floor, which was pretty convenient.

 

Understaffed front desk

I had 2 instances with the front desk on my trip.  When I was checking in, I had to wait behind 2 parties while 3 other people were being helped.  Usually, when I check into hotels, I usually only have to wait a minute or two before another employee pops up out of nowhere to help me.  However, in this instance, it was just those 3 people and the customers were taking a long time.  Maybe my threshold for hotel check in/outs is extremely low, but I feel waiting more than 5 minutes isn’t acceptable, especially for a hotel of this caliber.  In my defense, I have a higher wait time threshold for the concierge since I understand they have to explain directions to tourists.

The second time I had to deal with the front desk was when I had asked for a late 2pm checkout, which they let me do.  Then when I returned at 1:30PM, my keycard didn’t work and had to go to the front desk.  Once again, I had to wait behind 2 people and only 2 people were working.  What really made me upset this time was the nicely suited gentlemen (who I assumed was the manager,) after helping the person in front of him, just walked away to the back room while I stood there waiting for him. Luckily he came back in a minute or 2 and helped me, but walking away from a customer is a big no-no in my book.

 

Gold member – 250 SPG points or 2 drinks?

I love when the front desk asks this question.  I’ll take 2 free [alcoholic] drinks over 250 SPG points ANY DAY.

 

Free Wifi without logging in

The front desk had told me to use the usual last name and room number to log into the Wifi, but I was able to connect and be on my way (without authenticating.)  Maybe my phone defaulted to the lobby WiFi since we were on the same floor as the lobby, but whatever, I’m not complaining.  Speeds were okay.

 

The room

When I first entered the room, my first comment to my wife was, “It looks like we’re in a Tiffany’s box.”  Some other random thoughts:

• There weren’t any toiletries like Q-tips in the bathroom, which I thought was odd
• I did like the 1 bottle of water in my room.  I also liked how housekeeping dropped off 2 bottles every night with turn-down service.
• I loved the [Heavenly?] bed and sheets
• Our room was at the end of the hall, which was great, but you could still hear the doors closing in the mornings
• The blackout shades for the room were just ‘okay’ – I would have preferred more blackout

Conclusion

A couple more random thoughts – the four elevators are also the slowest elevators I’ve ever witnessed in a hotel.  Maybe it’s due to the popularity of the rooftop bar, Departures, but I just remember waiting a really long time on different occasions.

The hotel emailed me my bill after I checked out, and I noticed a $5 charge on it.  I tried to reply back to the email address and it was an invalid email address.  That also pissed me off.  Eventually I called the hotel to ask what that charge was, and they told me it was for a granola bar at the minibar that I did NOT eat.  They refunded the charge.

Don’t get me wrong – I still really liked the hotel.  I just feel like they’re not really trying hard since they know they are one of, if not THE, best hotel in Portland.