We travel very often and this has been by far the most beautiful hotel and friendless staff. We were greeted immediately by the hotel manager which she escorted us to the front desk. We were all checked in and ready to head to our room in less than 1 minute. What completely surprised me was that the front desk clerk actually escorted us to the elevators in the tower. We are very accustom to 4 star & 5 star hotels and I would rate this hotel for it's beautiful, friendly staff a 6 star quality. Looking forward to my next stay.

I am at the Renaissance Riverview right now. First impression - beautiful, spotless, and service excellent. And that has proved true so far. A few negatives:

1. They charge for internet service. That's just chintzy. I've been in much less expensive hotels where internet access is free.

2. This is the big huge negative. The food is horrible and vastly overpriced. I had a Caesar salad and the chicken was gray and unappetizing. The lemon tart was supposed to be served with Mayhew Jelly. No jelly was on the plate. The tart itself was meh. The crust was cold and soggy. I also had a roast beef and cheese panini. It was lousy and was served with cheap, plain potato chips. There is no "bar food" at the bar. Just a subset of the sandwich selection from their regular menu. Everyone is complaining about the lousy food and the high prices.

3. If you need to purchase something, e.g., drug store items, and you don't have a car, forget it. There is nothing in this part of town and the hotel doesn't have a sundries store. There is a weird little
store across the street that sells junk food and a few office supplies and a few drug store items, but it has an extremely limited selection.

4. Hotel clocks are notorious for having weird, complex ways to set the alarms, but these win the prize. I actually think mine was broken.

5. The hallways and other public areas are kept freezing cold. Uncomfortable and a waste of energy.

My friend and I spent two nights at the Battle House for a continuing education course we were taking at the RSA tower. The hotel is just beautiful, the stained glass ceilling unbelievable. We had a room with 2 queen beds in the historic part of the hotel. It was a very nice room, but was a weird shape, so one bed was perpendicular but close to the tv, and then the other bed was way at the other end of the room so it was hard to see the tv. I'm not sure if they were all designed like this, but our room had a poor design. That is my only complaint about the hotel. We dined in the restaurant, The Trellis Room, and it was delicious, but also really expensive. I have traveled many places and I still find it shocking to find a $75 entree on a menu. We ordered salads and appetizers as our meal since we weren't extremely hungry (after having a nice meal provided by our course for lunch that day). It was plenty of food and only was around $100 a couple. Downtown Mobile is being renovated but still has a while to go. It was pretty dead that first night (Thursday) but we did have a pretty good meal at the Royal Scam which is a couple of blocks down the street.

This hotel was lovely at a glance. The rooms were wonderful and the little bar was nice as it had a great view of the parade as it made its way through town. However, the service in the bar was very very slow. There was only one restaurant and it had a limited menu and was very pricey.
Though the web site boasted about its spa, swimming pool, exercise facility, none of it was completed. The hotel had an arrangement with the local YMCA and you could shuttle over there for exercise. As for the spa and salon they were at a sister property so you had to shuttle there as well.
Downtown Mobile was quaint and quiet!! Most stores and shops were not open (it was a Saturday) and there were very few places to eat and no places to shop within walking distance. When I called the concierge inquiring about their list of interesting places we found in the room she had no idea where we were talking about and had to put me on hold to find out. Once returning she informed me the places I mentioned were closed.
In addition, the hotel arranged a cab to take us to our function, when we were escorted to the van by the bellhop there was an older man ( the driver) in the back with his trousers unzipped the bellhop asked us to wait a second and the man exited adjusting his pants and went around to the drivers seat where he drove us 7miles and charged 25.00.
Basically you paid a hefty price to sleep, 169 per night for a king room (military rate), have a nice meal (150.00 for 2 salads and 1 fabulous steak and 2 glasses of wine), and look at each other, unless of course you wanted to cab it all over town, not likely after our previous experience.
I relayed my concerns to the hotel staff as we were checking out and got a blank stare with a "Thank you for staying with us"
A shame really because I had such high hopes after seeing their web site. This was supposed to be the first weekend away for my husband and I after having twins 3 years ago. The web really described a great remodeled historic hotel with lots of amenities, not so. Absolutely not worth it in my opinion