St. Louis Union Station Hotel

Check out my room here! https://youtu.be/pKkG37jNBNg

I admit it, I’m a pretty shallow consumer when it comes to picking hotels. I tend to gravitate towards initial appearances.  When my schedule took me back to St. Louis, I liked what I saw and decided to stay at the Hilton Curio’s St. Louis Union Station Hotel.

I really need to stop doing that!

The facility itself is gorgeous. A former railway station, the building now houses the hotel, several event spaces, three restaurants and an aquarium. It has also become the center of a mid-sized midway including carnival games, a mini-golf course, a Ferris wheel, several additional eateries and a koi pond that holds musical fire and light shows every hour. On the surface, you would think a hotel that boasts those kinds of attractions would have its act together when it comes to hospitality.

And like me, you would be wrong.

During my stay, I was planning to meet up with my husband, Dave. He had made the reservation weeks before and the plan was to travel separately and meet up later that night. But my schedule called for me to be in town earlier and I arrived around one in the afternoon. Exhausted and saddled with my luggage, portable office and laptop, I hoped to drop them off in my room before my next meeting to avoid the possibility of them being stolen from my car.

I looked up the hotel’s number on the website and called, asking if it was possible to check in early. I was told I could, so long as I could provide ID and the method of payment. No problem, I thought.  As usual, we had made the reservation with my credit card.

When I arrived, the woman at the front desk looked annoyed and asked if I had Dave with me. Momentarily thinking about the question, I replied, “Well, not in my roller luggage.” It was peculiar, to be sure, but I supposed I couldn’t fault her for asking.

Appearing less than amused, she then asked if I had the confirmation code.

Of course, I didn’t. Whoever asks for those? 

She then informed me that I couldn’t check in without Dave’s approval. Put out but not wanting to be a jerk, I called him to obtain it, using my speaker phone feature so she could hear.

He was still on the road when he answered and offered to provide whatever identifying information was needed to let me in the room. But the desk representative insisted he provide the confirmation code, which naturally he didn’t have either and would have required him to pull off the highway to look up.

With three other front desk workers looking on, she shrugged. I was out of luck.

In the past, when I have not been able to check in for one reason or another, the front desk staff have always offered to put me in another room temporarily or hold my luggage until the matter was resolved. The woman at the front counter could definitely see we had a reservation and that I had the predetermined method of payment in hand. But to my dismay, none of this mattered. After driving over five hours to get there, the Hilton left me hanging.

I wasn’t even offered a cart or pointed in the direction of an elevator. In full view of four front desk staff members, I lugged my luggage back down two flights of stairs and through the pass way before having to exit the building and walk all the way around to my parking spot.

If that wasn’t inconvenient enough, I had to pull all of my luggage into the public restroom with me to use the facilities.

All the while, the four of them watched me struggle without saying a word. As a small bruise began to form on my forearm, I consoled myself that at least my floor show was entertaining.

That said, the housekeeping, door man, valets and bar waitstaff were fantastic. It’s a shame they aren’t assigned to other places within the hotel with more public contact.  But the entire hotel felt very segmented and categorized and no one went out of their lane. The kitchen staff ran with the kitchen staff, the doorman and valet stuck by the door.

And it was apparent that practice really left some major gaps in the hotel’s abilities to handle spontaneous day-to-day customer service issues. Dishes remained outside rooms overnight and well into the following day because the kitchen didn’t appear to communicate room service to housekeeping. Security didn’t alert the doorman when they were restricting access to parts of the hotel for special events.

Nor could these groups count on the front desk for help. Those guys were as useless as a snowplow in the tropics.

At one point during my stay, a young housekeeper was wrangling a cart packed for an extended hike on the Appalachian Trail when a cleanser bottle fell and spilled everywhere. In spite of dozens of employees skuttling about, no one was there to help her clean it up-or even help her get the massively awkward cart in and out of the elevator.

It just seems like too big a place to do that. Which is a bummer, because the she looked drained, not happy.

The experience for visitors isn’t much better. For newcomers, the facility itself is very difficult to navigate. Common spaces like the lobby, pass way and court yard are ridiculously spaced with lots of massive gaps.

Very few ramps or elevators are easily visible, causing visitors to drag their luggage up wide flights of stairs as I did. While this could pose obvious difficulties for older guests as well as those with small children or mobility issues, neurodivergent people and those with environmental sensitivities may also find this problematic. Disabled veterans with trauma-related issues may also find the acoustics and large number of potential concealment sites stressful.

And the elevators the hotel has are not clearly marked. Instead, they are often camouflaged by ornate doors which appear to be for employees only or behind locks requiring room keys to use. Many of the more direct passageways are obstructed this way too. I certainly got my steps in as I had to walk around the massive complex several times before and after check in and during the many private events during my stay.

At one point, after being dropped off outside one of the hotel’s main entrances, I was told the hotel had closed access by that side of the building that day and was redirected to another door.

When I reached that door, I was intercepted by three other hotel staff (special events staff, not doormen) who said I was not allowed to come inside that way either. Again, I was directed to go around to another entrance on a different side of the building.

Great! Just what I wanted! Another walk!

Besides being annoying, the confusion concerns me with the hotel’s overall safety in terms of fires and other evacuation scenarios. If nobody knows what’s going on, how can they safely direct guests? And likewise, how are guests supposed to exit if they cannot find the appropriate path without a hike?

Then there are the elevators which sometimes do not display the correct floor or even show up when called. The keypad is equally confusing, labeling the third-floor lobby as “lobby” but the floor signal displays 3 (or sometimes another number.) The lobby button on the keypad also routinely remains illuminated as if you haven’t reached the floor yet, leaving you to realize later that you missed it. I watched so many families and confused travelers go up and down the floors on their quest to simply go outside!

The rooms themselves are plenty big enough but are sorely plain and very disappointing when compared to the public spaces of the station itself. If I had to categorize the design theme, I would describe it as early modern Ho Jo.  Like Howard Johnson, the rooms are well arranged and clean, except for the fork I found in a bathroom nook along with a hairdryer and iron.

I’m not sure if it was there on purpose. It’s kind of hard not to discount logic at some point during your stay simply as a coping mechanism.

There was no vent in the bathroom, which makes sharing a room a little less convenient and something I did not expect from a high-end hotel. As were the mattresses, which were so-so and definitely not worth the cost of the stay.  I was further disappointed to find the literature left on the desk by the television informed guests that the Grand Hall Market and the Station Grille Restaurant were available for breakfast-at an additional charge.

But in the midst of the chaos, I discovered a way to eat breakfast for free.

Let me tell you more…

Tucked away on the third floor by rooms 3002-3319 is an Executive Lounge which serves continental breakfast for “members”. 

As I investigated, it began to feel like the Executive Lounge was the hotel’s version of Area 51. Members of what? I’m still not really sure.  This is not something the hotel advertises or offered as a program, as far as I could tell. The front desk staff said nothing about a promotional program or the existence of this space.

Then again, I’m not entirely sure they would say something if I was still struggling to get all my suitcases out of the public restroom.

About halfway down the hallway is a sign welcoming you to the space, before telling you that a train key is necessary to be permitted access, that you will have to present your key to the Lounge Attendant, and you are forbidden access if you do not have the key.

But if you arrive during the breakfast rush hour (somewhere between 8a and 9a), someone will invariably hold the door open for you. And the attendant, responsible for clearing tables, refilling coffee pots and re-stocking food and dishes, will be far too occupied to verify whether or not you have a train key.

Or perhaps it’s not the attendant’s job to check for keys? Maybe there is another key-person whose job it is to do that? This hotel loves it’s compartmentalization.

If you aren’t a jerk, you can enjoy an average hotel breakfast on them. Either way, the front desk will never know.

My takeaway: Very little value for the hype. Enjoy the public amenities but stay somewhere else.

Do you have a hotel you would like me to review? Send me a line at toilandtroublemediagroup@gmail.com