For a hotel with the reputation they have it was absolutely an awful stay. Rooms need renovation, no manager presence, apathetic staff, no room service (i.e., no fresh towels or toilet paper or made bed after coming back to our room at 10pm), coffee bar is over priced and beginner baristas make the drinks wrong, bar tenders do t know how to make drinks and are rude, WiFi doesn't work consistently, restaurant says it's open until 10 but closes at 9:30, Gabe me no information when I checked in, and to top it all off they allowed a tattered American flag to remain wrapped around the pole unsafely u til told otherwise.
We love this hotel. the front desk pleople, the rooms and the environment.
Warning Long! It pains me to write this review as we have stayed at the Viking Hotel many times and never had any major issues until this stay. We checked in on Sunday on to be told they had no rooms ready as one of their cleaning ladies got sick so they gave us a complimentary breakfast and we waited until 5pm for the room. When we got our room it looked ok but it smelled terrible! I requested another room and they said they only had king beds available but they offered a cot. The cot never came, they ran out. Tons of people in the lobby waiting to check in, no rooms ready. Took my daughter to the pool- filthy, green mold around the pool, no clean towels disgusting. Hotel room dirty, hotel lobby and carpets filthy. Not wanting to drive 3 1/2 hours Home we stayed the night. The room was never cleaned the next day, no towels available at all in the hotel- not for the rooms or the pool?!?! Crazy. No explanations, no apology from the manager- we never saw him. I was told the manager was cleaning rooms yesterday bc no cleaning staff. We checked out, came home early, now we all feel sick. Only to find out we were supposed to be not charged for the one night we stayed $220, only to find out we were charged $660! (The 2 nights were supposed to total $440) - only of course no one is answering their phones, they are still a total mess. One poor mom had crying twins at 7pm last night waiting to check in since 4pm but they had nothing available. It was like a cruise ship in trouble and it was awful. People shouting fighting crying in the lobby with NO explanations given. We will never stay here again. Someone said they were calling the local tv station and I hope they did.
Not what it used to be but much more expensive!
I'm a bit sad to be writing this review. The Hotel Viking is very special to my family. It's where my husband and I took our first romantic getaway. It's where we got married. Staying there right before Christmas has become a new tradition for us. But the hotel, and the service provided is not what it used to be. Meanwhile it is becoming more and more expensive.
We live locally, so staying at the Viking is a choice we make to get away without having to travel, but I'm not sure we will make that choice again. Back in December, we made our annual Christmas visit, checking out on Christmas Eve, however the staff lost our car keys, which delayed us by more than an hour. But what was most distressing is that they didn't tell us what was going on. We just sat there waiting. No one offered us breakfast while we waited, or even coffee (eventually I asked for some and was not charged). They didn't offer to return us to our room while we waited or do anything out of the way to make us comfortable, they just left us sitting in the lobby while they rushed around searching for our keys. After more than an hour waiting, they finally drove us home in the Hotel car so we could get our spare key. We waited all that time when we needed to get home to prepare for guests, only to have to do more running around to get our car back! They finally found our keys hours later and brought them back to us, but never did we receive any kind of apology from the management. I filled out their customer satisfaction survey and still no apology. I canceled an upcoming weekend away, and told them why, but still nothing. Let me be clear this was a multi-hour delay on a major holiday, with no consideration except for a free cup of coffee I had to ask for!
But then my daughter asked to stay there for her birthday. It's quite understandable since the hotel has been so special to our family and she associates it with love and luxury, so I booked a room. I was shocked to discover that parking, which had previously been included in the $25 resort fee, was now $40 on top of the resort fee. Keep in mind this is a service which lost my keys! Our room was worn, the carpet by the bathroom was frayed. My daughter needed a sewing kit, I told her there was probably one with the toiletries on the sink counter. Only there were no toiletries. The soap and lotion were in wall-mounted dispensers (this may have been the same as our last stay), but there were no cotton balls, q-tips, shower caps: nothing I have come to expect when staying a quality hotel. There wasn't even a pen and pad of paper in the room for me to write something on when I made a phone call! The Comfort Inn provides more comforts at a much lower price!!!
And don't get me started on the pool! First of all, the Jacuzzi is tiny, and the pool deck is carpeted, so it is sopping wet. It was vacation week and tons of families, so you expect the pool to be busy, but it was disgusting! No clean towels, I had to run to the front desk to get some. And even after I did that and mentioned the person-sized pile of dirty towels overflowing on the pool deck, no one came down to clean up. Towels were strewn all over, and as families left, their room service trays and dirty towels just sat there with no one cleaning up.
In short: save your money. Or if you want to splurge, try one of the water-front hotels in Newport. The only reason to stay at this one is sentimentality, and that will get you absolutely nothing when your stay is unenjoyable. I am so sad to think we won't be staying here again!
All was great in our stay here except when we checked in, there were no towels in the bathroom and a coffee maker had to be delivered after we requested it. Other than that, our 3-night stay was excellent. Loved the fireplace in the entry, with comfortable seating. Also loved the car service with drivers who were very conciliatory, even getting out to open the doors for us in the rain AND staying past their quitting hour, to retrieve us from a restaurant. Our final night there, our group of 12 women pulled the tables together in the bar and ordered bar & restaurant food which one of the twins ably handled! Overall, we loved staying in this historic hotel - they even lit the outdoor fireplaces so we could enjoy the early evening. So, in writing this, I think the "very good" really should be "excellent" as needing towels and coffeemaker don't come close to offsetting all the other great aspects of our stay!