Elwood Hotel & Suites

What an amazing hidden gem in the heart of Lexington!!! The location was perfect for our weekend getaway... just a short drive to the Bourbon Trail, horse farms and Keeneland. I have stayed in 4 star luxury hotels that were no where near as clean as our Junior Suite was. Huge room, cool vibe and comfy bed and pillows. The bar and restaurant were such a bonus! Creative mixed drinks and delish food!!! They did tend to get super busy in the morning and evening so I would recommend getting your reservations before you arrive. Every single person we encountered from the front desk, to the restaurant servers, to the housekeeper we passed in the hallway seemed to genuinely love working there and made us feel so welcomed. I HIGHLY recommend this super cute, boutique hotel when in Lexington!!!

Quaint, yes. My compliments end there. One tiny bar soap in the bathroom. When asking the cleaning staff if this is all we get, the answer was “yes“. During our stay I saw, on the Elwood website, that the ensuing two days of our planned stay were over $100 less than what we had paid a few weeks earlier, ahead of time. When asking the concierge about the discrepancy at the check-in desk about this, the response was “what do you want me to do about it“? Beware.

This is a lovely boutique hotel in a great location. The two double bed room we booked was much larger than a typical chain hotel room. There were two armoires with shelves, and the area outside the bathroom had more open shelves so there was plenty of storage room for our stuff. This would be great especially for a longer stay so you could fully unpack and get organized. One pet peeve of mine is that most two double bedded rooms only have a night stand in the middle, so the second person in one of the double beds doesn't get a night stand. Not at the Elwood. A night stand with a charging station is positioned on the outside of both double beds and there's also a moveable side table and bench between the beds, so everyone in our family had a place for their night time water. The night stand charging stations were convenient and had enough working plugs for all of us. The beds were comfortable, and we enjoyed quiet nights. The mini fridge was actually a good size, large enough to hold a gallon of spring water positioned on its side. There was no in room coffee maker, but the person who checked us in offered to have one brought up to our room. We declined, as coffee is available in the lobby each morning, and they graciously made decaf specially for me each morning. Which brings me to the other area in which the Elwood excelled: hospitality! We were warmly greeted when we arrived and each time we exited and returned. Staff asked what brought us to the area when we checked in (the Kentucky Horse Park) and when we returned from there the next day, they remembered and asked us whether we'd enjoyed our visit. The only negative thing was the shower over tub: the tub surface has no slip treatment and the grab bar is positioned low to help someone get out of the tub and not to help someone taking a shower. We asked and the hotel doesn't have tub mats, so we picked one up at Target to use. Now I'm going to travel with this mat in my luggage just in case we ever encounter slippery showers again. We enjoyed the hotel's restaurant, too -- I will be posting a separate review. We'll happily stay at the Elwood again.

Unfortunately, I didn’t pay enough attention to the low ratings for unprofessional service and urge fellow travelers to learn from my oversight. Overall, I found the hotel over-hyped, and the stay did not live up to the boutique hotel experience promised on the website. While the exterior is beautiful, the rooms and service levels feel more like a cramped, poorly renovated motel with noisy rooms than a high-end property. Additionally, my second-floor room had a faint yet persistently unpleasant odor, likely emanating from the restaurant below. P.S. If you're a business traveler, consider staying somewhere with better business amenities like a later checkout time or proper common spaces. My conference call was set to run 30 minutes beyond checkout, but the front desk curtly denied my late checkout request, leaving the noisy bar and lounge as the only alternatives. For those considering this hotel, please note that unprofessional or unaccommodating service might be part of your stay here.

I am perplexed as to the rave reviews of this hotel. My impressions are that it is a restaurant trying to run a hotel as a secondary endeavor. My daughter attends UK and we try different hotels in the area so that we have recommendations for family when they come to Lexington. This would definitely be a no from me. As many other reviewers have mentioned, the outside and first floor are beautiful. That's where it ends. You do oddly feel you are walking through the restaurant when you head to the check-in desk, which is unmarked. The front desk also serves as the host/hostess for the restaurant so it's confusing to discern that it is the check-in and often there is no one there since they are attending to the restaurant patrons. You have to walk by the kitchen door, where servers are walking out with arms full of food, past the highchair storage, to the heavy fire doors that lead to the hotel rooms. Our room was 100% disappointing. You can see the comparison in the photos between the public spaces and hotel rooms. I will say that the staff were friendly (aside from the manager), but seem way overworked. We checked in after midnight, and had to wait 10 minutes for the front desk to return from getting a mop for the restaurant. The bartender was cleaning and acknowledged we were waiting. The next day, we slept in and got a late start after doing some remote work. Before we left, I asked the manager at the front desk if we could have our linens changed because we had spilled something on the sheets and we also needed our trash removed. Her response was that housekeeping was only available until 2 (it was 1:50). She asked if we had left our sheets and trash outside our room since the DND was on. What? That seems a bit odd. When did that become a thing? She said that chances were it was too late, that our floor had already been done. When I pressed her for other options, nicely, she said to me, "We are not, like, a full-service hotel". What? I definitely felt like I was paying "full-service" prices - I'm still not sure what that comment even means. She said she would "try to get you linens and you can change the sheets yourself, but I can't guarantee it." I then became a bit more assertive and told her I expected linens in our room regardless of whether or not housekeeping had left for the day. I realize they are considered a boutique hotel, but usually management at boutique hotels are super friendly and will be sure guests are taken care of. To tell me that MAYBE I could change my own sheets seemed ridiculous. At the end of the day, there were clean linens put in our room and the trash was removed. We did not get housekeeping service until the fourth day of our stay and there was no communication from the front desk or in the room about anything related to our stay. Seeing as there was a restaurant, it was weird that there was no room service either. When I asked the woman at check in at midnight if there was water in the room, I was told there was a snack area on the second floor where I could purchase water. This turned out to be a closet with two vending machines that held nothing other than chips, candy, and energy drinks. Overall, a weird experience. I would not recommend this hotel to anyone going to Lexington. There are great, welcoming hotels in the area for the same price and much better service from management. For the rest of the visit, I had the odd feeling that we were intruding on the restaurant business and were out of place and unwelcome. I can't remember a place I've felt like that so strongly.