The Brown Palace Hotel and Spa, Autograph Collection

LIPSTICK ON A PIG! Looks nice, rooms terrible! TERRRIBLE! If you like warm drinks and cold showers at expensive prices - this is the place for you. Property looks nice and the common areas are, but the rooms - lipstick on a pig. No hot water so had to take a cold shower. Said they could not move us so we just had to take cold showers. Can you imagine? Over $500 a night and no hot showers to be had? Pathetic. Refrigerator dirty and didn't work anyway Ask them to replace it and they assured it would be taken care of - nope. Ice machines - had to go the lobby and even the employee we talked to had no clue where to get ice. Ended up getting it at the bar! Front desk completely useless. No idea about restaurants in the are, made assurance to get things fixed - nothing happened.

Broken AC I travel a ton for work and typically use the Marriott / Bonvoy system. The hotel lobby is very impressive but my room was tiny and rundown. My main issue is the AC was broken and the I believe the hotel was aware of that at check in but failed to mention to me. I had to call the front desk in the middle of the night both nights so the technician could open up the wall to turn on the unit. My options were freezing cold or no AC at all.

THE BEST! As a Marriott rewards member, we booked the Brown Palace for my husband's birthday and we were thrilled. Senior discount, but they also upgraded our room at check in and sent truffles and wine to our room for our special occasion. Beautiful. Historical. So fun to watch families dressed up for afternoon tea. LOVE THIS PLACE!!!

Bad experienced handled professionally by the staff I know that booking at a historic hotel comes with risks. There probably won't be enough outlets for our modern devices, but the atmosphere will more than make up for it, right!? Not here. I had planned to stay 3 nights, but aired my concerns after a few hours and checked out the next day. What was wrong? Primarily the atmosphere - it was not a relaxing experience. It was like being in a hostel. There was a scraped up dorm fridge leaning against one wall, and it tipped over every time you tried to access it. The "mini bar" area was on a crappy tea cart made of pine. The light in the closet was emitting about 5 watts of electricity. The bathroom plumbing was visible from the vanity (why did you make that choice?), the shower head was coming out of the wall, and one shower head dribbled water and the other screeched like a banshee while running. In all, the issue was an overall lack of design in the room, which resulted in the experience not being relaxing or elegant at all. Then, the inability to control the central air in the room made for a loud night and tipped me over the edge of simply checking out. NOTE - the hotel staff were EXCELLENT. Apologetic for my experience and equipped to do whatever they needed to do to make it right by me. Keep that up, management! On the other hand, as I was checking out early, a man next to me was yelling at the front desk staff (not necessary, dude) but also checking out early. So maybe take note of this, management.

Look Elsewhere I do not recommend this hotel. We planned to stay four nights, but left after two. On our first day, we noticed the bathroom sink quickly backed up and took a very long time to drain. Maintenance was called, they arrived quickly, but could not correct the problem because they “loaned the drain snake” to the Holiday Inn which is adjacent to the Brown Palace. Okay, we thought we could live with it since there were two sinks. We were given a card with a $20 credit for the bar downstairs. The next day, when showering, we noticed there was no hot water. Our room was located on the ninth floor (nine floors total). After running the shower about 20-25 minutes it became lukewarm, but not warm enough for a shower. So, this time, I went to the front desk and was told I should turn on the water on both sinks and flush the toilet several times while running the water in the shower, but expect it will still take 15-20 minutes to get hot water in the shower, since we were on a high floor of the hotel. At this point, I asked for another room. The hotel staff took me to a room on the third floor where I tested the shower and noted that it still took over five minutes to get hot water and the shower handle was so loose, it seemed ready to fall off, but I was just happy to be able to get hot water, so I went back up to the ninth floor and packed up and moved to the new room. I was pleased the staff was able to accommodate us. They gave me a card with a $15 food and beverage credit which I thought was funny after receiving one earlier for the clogged sink. Arriving in the new room, I noticed the room was quite warm, the thermostat indicated 77 degrees and it had been a very warm day, so I adjusted the thermostat to 70 and left to get more luggage from the other room. Coming back a little while later later, I noticed the AC hadn’t turned on at all, still 77 degrees at 8pm. Adjusting the thermostat further had no effect, the room had no AC. Needless to say, I was done at this point. We packed up again and moved back to the ninth floor so we could have AC for the night and checked out the next morning. Yes, the hotel is old and historic, which is one of the reasons I selected this hotel. But it is very clear the management of this hotel has decided to forego proper maintenance required, especially needed for a hotel that is over one hundred years old. These issues are addressable, they just have chosen not to. I paid over $500 per night and when I pay that much, I expect to get sinks that drain properly, hot water, and air conditioning. Without that, all you have is a historic hotel that will become a museum because it will be inhabitable. Sad, because the lobby level is beautiful, but all the money for maintenance and improvements is spent only on that floor. It’s very disappointing that the hotel’s answer to all its shortcomings is to give out discounts on food and drinks because it doesn’t want to address maintenance issues. This is not the way to run a viable business. This hotel is managed by Marriott and I expected more from this Company. It certainly gives me pause to consider other Marriott managed hotels in the future.