St Regis Venice

The hotel in newly renovated and easily to be reached by public boat (1 minute walk). -The dinning and the breakfast direct at the Grande Canal is superb- -Rooms are spacious with modern bathroom facilities. What I missed was the "Welcome Ceremony" and to often she staff was not coordinated and authorized for even small issues - thus only 4 out of 5.

I was very excited to stay at this hotel. I walked away overall disappointed, and will try and share the pros and cons for future potential guests. I think depending on what's important to you (and of course, the rate offered), it can make sense to give this "St. Regis" a try. But you should question a St. Regis that's rated in the middle (#209 of 405 as of early August 2020) of the hotels in its city. This must be the worst relatively rated St. Regis on the planet. First, I expected a warm greeting. Italy is slowly recovering from a global pandemic and tourism is grasping for life. Instead, my welcome consisted of a 30 minute wait (around 16:00!), followed by the most condescending check-in I've ever experienced. My rate was pointed out as being quite low, and I was made to feel "fortunate" to be there. I was told I was upgraded - but should not have been - despite my status. What do you even say to that? In addition, some other bumps: - St. Regis "pressing" service is not available; instead an iron was delivered and placed by an outlet that didn't work. Smooth! - Breakfast service was never very good. Items missing, unordered items arriving, menus left at the (crowded & small) table. You see this echoed in other reviews. - We spent around EUR 300 on dinner. They still added EUR 12 in cover charges. They'll reply with something like "it's OK, all restaurants here do this" but not really. The good ones don't. In addition, we're hotel guests - this was just dirty. Let's talk about the good stuff. First, the refurbishment completed one year ago IS definitely St. Regis quality. The grand salon, the rooms (mostly) and the terrace are all spectacular. In fact, the terrace and garden are so lovely, it added two points to my rating. We loved it so much we threw out dinner plans and had dinner at Gio's our second night (in addition to breakfasts). The preauthorization shows up on your credit card as "HOTEL WESTIN EUROPA REG..." - and this is sadly quite apt. If you can snag a deal, definitely go for it. But for their normal rates, no way is it worth it. Come have breakfast or a coffee or dinner on the magical terrace, and leave it at that.

So we decided our first trip overseas since the easing of restrictions should be a long weekend in Venice and after contacting several hotels to find out the current offerings we decided on 5 nights at St.Regis Venice. We arrived to a very warm and helpful check-in experience and taken to our room with a perfect view and balcony over the Grand Canal, truly stunning. A bottle of Prosecco was waiting for us in our room along with some chocolates, a lovely touch. The room was stunning, amazingly comfy bed and the balcony really did give what we thought at the time was as good a view you could get in Venice. Breakfast the next morning was a bit more hit and miss, adapting to the new way of doing service was understandably taking some time. The breakfast area is lovely however, seated outside by the Grand Canal, you can choose a table right by the canal, or a little further back facing out to the canal. We did both over the 5 nights and prefered being slightly set back. We enjoyed the breakfast even if it did take some work on the first morning. Exploring Venice in the summertime without the crowds was magical. We did have a couple of technical issues in the room on the first full day there and took some trips to reception to sort, but they were helpful and apologetic. On our 3rd day there we hit a bigger issue, the air conditioning stopped working and after a couple of engineer visits they could not fix it. This usually would be a big issue, having to pack and move half way through a short stay, but the hotel really stepped up and moved us to what must be one of the best suites in Venice, maybe the world. The suite was huge, but the Terrace, well you could easily hold a party for 25 people on it, sun loungers, 360 views over Venice, words cannot do it justice, se we spend 3 nights in this most magical suite. I am a firm believer in accepting there will be issues when travelling, especially when you travel a lot, the true sign of a great hotel is how they deal with the issues and the St. Regis Venice stepped up and went above and beyond. We accept we were lucky as normally in the summer the hotel would be packed and they couldn't have done what they did, but they didn't have to do it now, but they did. The staff were all amazing, front desk and the butler's so helpful and after our first morning issues at breakfast the staff there were great to. Really can't recommend the hotel enough!!