A lot of positives - but remodel not the best WARNING! Long winded review ahead!
TL:DR VERSION: Hotel is good but not great after remodel. Pros: Location, clean, good continental breakfast, balconies available. Cons: Remodel quality is subpar in areas, some maintenance items and smells still exist in common areas, no AC in workout area.
FULL REVIEW: So the Clarion had a full remodel in the last year and is completely changed from the former brand. I think since they’re starting over with zero reviews that I should leave a nice in depth review to inform future stays and as good feedback for hotel management/owners. I’ll break our review up into a number of categories so you can skip to the parts that matter to you most: OUR STAY/INITIAL IMPRESSION, THE ROOM, AMENITITIES, LOCATION, CONCLUSION
OUR STAY: We stayed here over the 4th of July holiday because we were making room for extended family at the cottage at the time. Our group was a family of 4 (parents and 2 children, age 3 and 5) and we stayed in one of the 2 double bed balcony rooms. Our initial impression was very good. The remodel looks very nice in the main lobby, the front desk person was very friendly. However, the remodel is far from perfect unfortunately… as you’ll see as a recurring theme, they may have gone a little cheap in some areas and certain obvious things were not addressed and thus kept this from being a higher review.
One thing to note if you have mobility issues is to make sure you book and ADA accessible room. The building was built in stages so each section is at a different elevation (you go up a couple steps to get to different rooms on the same floor). This means if you didn’t book at ADA room, you may have to walk outside and back into the building to use a different elevator than the one near the lobby. This is also good to keep in mind if you have a lot of luggage to drag up to your room!
THE ROOM: As stated, we had a 2 double bed balcony room. It was refreshed just like the rest of the hotel. The room itself was decently clean, had comfortable beds, and was very modern looking. The remodel job though was not the best. Almost every surface looks like it was at least painted, and the new fixtures and furnishings were all new, along with new laminate flooring (the hotel may be pet friendly, we saw several people with dogs there). However, the quality of the remodel left something to be desired. It looks like a homeowner did a DIY remodel on their own home and/or like it was a house quick flip. The quality of tilework for example was not very good, some fixtures still had the old items (maybe they’re still working to take care of a few punch list items?), several outlets and USB connections did not work and generally the quality was questionable.
One issue though is that the room was a bit musty/humid. It look running the AC a while to get the air dehumidified enough. Mind you this is early July in northern Wisconsin and this is a room that has direct access to the outdoors via the balcony. Another issue seems like the AC and bathroom ventilization are probably holdovers from the pre-remodel… so some of the smell and generally air quality could be affected by that. I didn’t feel like it was unclean or unhealthy though.
In terms of size, that room was acceptable for the four of us. The bathroom toilet and shower area was separate from the sink, which is nice when getting ready in the morning -especially with the new bright lighting in the vanity area. The toilet/shower room was very small though. So it’s a compromise and you need to decide what’s important to you. For us, the separate sink area was a plus in exchange for the smaller private space.
AMENITIES: The hotel had a number of nice amenities. There is a pool which would have been great for the kids if the weather was bad, although it kind of felt like an overlooked part of the remodel. It was dated/had a old feel to it and is in the basement-y area. They also had a good fitness area with several pieces of workout equipment that all looked brand spanking new. However, the AC was not working in the workout area. We realize after the fact that it wasn’t working because there was not outlet for them to plug the unit into! So unless they update that, don’t plan on AC while working out.
Other amenities to consider are the continental breakfast which I thought was pretty good. Waffles, cereals/oat meal, bagels, toast, yogurt, etc was all available and was good quality. The breakfast is good enough to sustain you for a few days at least before getting tired of the same items. The staff did a good job of keeping it pretty clean during breakfast and coming by when there was a mess.
The hotel also had plenty of free parking, wifi seemed decent, our room had a coffee maker with enough to last a few days. We did not have room service during our 4 days, so I can not comment on the quality of that. Some amenities in the room that we liked was a refrigerator with freezer, microwave, an ok tv, and coffee maker.
LOCATION: I think the biggest draw for this hotel is the location. It’s the only hotel located right downtown Rhinelander instead of on the outskirts on the southwest or northeast edges of the city. Not that it’s a huge town, but if you want to be able to walk to a non-chain restaurant, the candy shop (definitely stop here), ice cream, bars, etc this would be your best option. Being a small town, it’s not hard to navigate and this is definitely the most central hotel.
CONCLUSION: Overall, I’m going to give this stay a 4 star… if it was in a larger city with a lot of competition it may have dropped to a 3 or maybe even a two because of the quality of the remodel and despite being refreshed still had some lingering areas that had that old dingy feel (pool, inside elevators, some stairwells). However, there were also a lot of positives to this place after the remodel. If location, cleanliness, friendly staff, good breakfast, having a balcony, and numerous good in room amenities make up for that, then this is a good option to choose.