The Westin Sacramento Riverfront Hotel & Spa

Excellent Stay! Balcony, Room service and streaming TV! Full restaurant and bar right next door! Super clean, GREAT STAFF. Relaxing place, but away from the downtown noise. Not many first class options in the area. Better check them out!!

I used to think of the Westin brand as slightly higher end. Recent stays at various Westins (DC, LAX, SFO) and here have shown the brand is in freefall and probably should just be merged into a lower end brand that doesn’t purport to offer any service. The front desk is in disarray. On check-in, there was no room, which would not be a big deal since it was 3 p.m. and check-in time is 4 p.m. The concept of a check-in time is itself irritating since most people don’t really organize their travel by arbitrary hotel check-in times. But on check-in, they appear not to keep track of who is waiting for a room. We sat for an hour while other people got rooms. Zero communication from the front desk even though we were sitting right there in the lobby. They apparently maintain a list of people needing rooms on post-it notes, so multiple other guests who arrived after us got assigned rooms since they apparently lost track of who was waiting for rooms. When we inquired, they couldn’t even tell us if there was a room ready and when it would be available (by that time it was the published check-in time). It turns out a room had been available, judging by the fact that the staff finally got their act in gear and when we arrived at the room there clearly was no housekeeping in sight anywhere on the floor so the room had not just been cleaned. The front desk needs a better solution than post-it notes. Housekeeping is also in disarray. They didn’t bother to fill up the soap dispensers in the shower or the tub, so we ran out. (The tub dispenser had been empty before our arrival since we didn’t use it and it was empty when we tried to find a replacement for the empty shower dispenser. The front desk’s fix for that is to have housekeeping drop some off at some indeterminate time, which is not helpful since we’re trying to get cleaned up to leave). The physical space is hit or miss. Definitely nicer than some Westins with the recent renovation, but some aspects of it had zero thought. The shower is tiny and feels like an upright coffin. There’s tons of space in the bathroom since there’s a separate (and generally useless) tub there. It boggles my mind why they gave so little attention to the shower, The enclosure is cheap and leaks, so there’s water everywhere on the marble floor, which is a fall hazard. The beds are nice and generally consistent across Westin properties, so there’s some consistency there. The chairs in the rooms are useless and uncomfortable. They may as well have just gotten folding chairs from Walmart. Overall, not much thought has gone into the property itself or the way it is run. I’ll be looking for other options for visits to Sacramento.

We very much enjoyed our stay at the Westin Sacramento Riverfront Hotel. The room was very nice and comfortable with a view over the river. The hotel is in a beautiful and peaceful location by the river, with the possibility of taking a walk on the river trail. And the service from the attendants outside to the lobby personnel was great and very friendly.