We recently had a very pleasant family vacation in Houston. We are a family of 5 of which the children are 16, 18 and 20 years old. We enjoy family vacations together, sitting around together in the evening, watching movies, exploring new restaurants, leisurely breakfasts and so on. For a family like ours, the two bedroom suite of the DoubleTree is ideal – two full bedrooms, two full bathrooms, a kitchen, a living room – perfect and very comfortable.

Strengths
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1. The location is great – one short block, with a pleasant, shaded walkway to the Galleria.

2. As mentioned, the general layout and concept of the suite was perfect.

3. Service was very friendly – everyone from desk staff to maids was warm and friendly.

4. The workout room was pretty nice, with high quality equipment. One of the two Nautilus treadmills was not working the day we arrived, but it was repaired the next day.

5. The kitchen was compact, but solid. Appliances included: dishwasher, microwave, garbage disposal, 4-burner stove/oven, normal size refrigerator/freezer.

6. Parking was convenient in the garage directly across from the courtyard entrance.


Weaknesses
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Note: I wish to emphasize that overall we enjoyed our stay and believe that we got reasonable value for the money. The reader should not misunderstand the following detailed list to indicate that this is a bad hotel overall. Overall, this is a good hotel. However, I am also a great believer in the economic usefulness of candid and unfiltered feedback in public venues such as TripAdvisor to help service providers recognize deficiencies and respond. As such:

1. The hotel has not been refurbished in many years and it shows everywhere. Everything is clean, but frayed around the edges. The furniture is inexpensive; drawers do not slide in and out easily. While the allocation of television sets in the suite was generous, the television in the main living area did not have the input jacks on the front to allow a family to attach DVD players, game consoles or the like.

2. The swimming pool should have been a “strength”. This is a beautiful pool, not the perfunctory little kidney shape thing, but rather a resort quality pool with gorgeous large trees and a great feature: a lap lane down one side. Unfortunately, keeping a resort quality pool operating at resort quality requires a lot of operating labor to constantly clean the pool, replace towels and so on. Clearly the DoubleTree does not have the resources to sustain this sort of around the clock support for the pool. The problem was further compounded by the beautiful trees (dropping lots of leaves in the pool) and the natural appeal of this sort of hotel to families with small children (extra heavy use by not necessarily well behaved patrons). As a result, no clean towels were available by early afternoon. Lap lane not-withstanding, the pool was not useable for serious workout swimming for several reasons. With no lifeguard to supervise, no lap-lane separator between the play area and the lap lane, lots of families with little children, leaves and clumps of hair in the water and so on, I simply was not comfortable attempting a serious, workout swim.

3. The coffee maker provided in the kitchen was some sort of small Wolfgang Puck two separate cup thing that did not really produce good coffee.

4. While plates, glasses, cups and silverware were provided, the equipment in the kitchen was not actually adequate to produce breakfast (our main interest). We had to go to the nearest grocery store and purchase a toaster, a frying pan, a spatula and a real coffee maker in order to make a normal breakfast for a family of five.

5. The faucet of the kitchen sink was in need of repair – it would not shut off properly. Each time the water was turned on, several seconds of jiggling and fiddling were required to turn the water off again.

6. The building was clearly designed to be a showcase facility when it was built (20-30 years ago?) and it still has a pleasingly, classy appearance. However, by current standards, the lobby area and restaurant area are distinctly undersized for such a large hotel. This under sizing problem was quite apparent our first night when the hotel hosted a large Middle Eastern wedding and the 2nd floor restaurant area that included the bar was wall-to-wall, elbow-your-way-through, packed.

7. Like the rest of the common area, the lobby-shop is undersized. As a result, they only have space for a few copies of the local Houston newspaper. If you don’t get down to the gift shop by 9AM, they are sold out and there are no other options to get a real newspaper nearby.

8. The hotel was designed without vending areas on each floor. As such, the usual industrial ice machines are not present. Instead, the hotel provides 4-5 ice trays in the kitchen freezer and you need to make your own.

9. The in-room internet service is provided by Wayport, a major national service provider. Unfortunately, Wayport seems to have not done a recent review of traffic statistics on this facility and it was clearly overloaded. Sites like Google and Mapquest which should normally snap onto the screen, sluggishly crawled across the screen refreshing.