I recently stayed at the Westin Galleria solely to attend an event. Before my trip, I read the various reviews posted here, but I decided to give the hotel the benefit of the doubt since I have had great experiences at most of the Starwood family hotels that I have stayed at previously. This was also my first trip to the area and I wanted to stay close to the actual event. It also appeared that guests of the many nearby hotels had similar problems to those that were related to the Westin.
Upon check-in, I was told that the type of room that I reserved was unavailable, but that I was being "upgraded" to a Preferred Guest floor. I must have raised an eyebrow at that because the man checking me immediately mumbled "which you would be on anyway, since you are a preferred guest" (and I have been for about 10 years). Apart from a longer ride on the elevator (not to mention the wait, but more on that later), the only other perk related to this "upgrade" was a free bottle of water each day (which was offered to other guests at $5.00). That was appreciated, but that could not make up for the "upgraded" room that I was placed in.
Upon first glance, the room looks like the modern, clean room that you see on the Westin's website. The more I looked around and the more lamps I turned on, the more I realized how disgusting the room was.
At first I was looking at nit-picky things-a mirror that was losing its edging, large scratches on every piece of furniture, spots on the carpet; then I started noticing the dust pile-ups on the lampshades, nightstands, and telephones. Then I realized that the spots on the carpet were hard and crunchy. I looked in the bathroom and saw a huge pile-up of dust on the air vent, some rust, soap scum, and mildew in the shower, and dirty tiled floors. (Another kicker in the bathroom: the water for the shower would not rise above a lukewarm temperature.)
All of this I could actually see and made me feel uncomfortable, but what I noticed next made me afraid of what was behind the walls that I could not see.
When I went to adjust my air conditioner temperature, I noticed that the wall paper near the unit was warped all the way down to the carpet. I looked up and saw that there were stains on the celing where it met the walls. I could hear water trickling throughout the night and I realized that there could be a mold problem if there was that much moisture around the unit. Needless to say, I did not get any sleep that night and eventually went down to the lobby to use the wireless service to look up on the internet some other area hotels to move to (I would have had to pay extra to get online in my own room). In the end, I decided to stay, partly because many of the other area hotels seemed to be on par with this one and because my event was going to be starting within the hour and I would be busy with activities for it all day long. However, during the day I was still bothered by the whole situation. I do not like to complain about trivial things, but there was so much that was adding to my overall disappointment in the hotel, that I decided to spend my dinner break on resolving the issue. I decided to just ask the front desk if a King room (what I had reserved) had opened up. I wasn't going to mention my other concerns, but I did think that if there was a potential mold issue, they should be made aware of it. When I attempted to go down 2 floors to the lobby, there was a huge wait for the elevator (at least 20 minutes), but luckily I did not have to wait as long to speak to someone at the front desk. The man that helped me was very understanding and located another room for me immediately. He even allowed me to go and take a look at it before moving in. Of course, I had to spend another 20 minutes waiting to go up the elevator and by the time I got to the new room, I just checked to make sure that the shower was clean and had hot water and the wallpaper was smoother near the air conditioner. It was, so I then had to wait for another elevator to go back down, claim the keys to my old room (they were holding them at the front desk), and relay back to the front desk that the new room was ok. After that, I had to wait again to go back up to my old room, gather up my stuff (which was quite a bit, because of the supplies I needed for the event), and move it all to my new room. After all of this, I had to return to my event without getting a chance to grab dinner. I thought maybe the management would at least follow up on my satisfaction with the new room, but I heard nothing, not even an apology. That was upsetting because the whole process was so time consuming to resolve and I later ended up noticing some stains resembling blood on the bathroom door and some similar damage around the air conditioner, but I decided to let it go. This was one trip where I really was not spending much time in the room and I could end up playing musical rooms all weekend.
I paid a discounted rate for the room and was extremely disappointed, but I would be outraged if I paid the going rate of $250-$300. If you do not know much about the area and you need to be at the Galleria or the convention center at the hotel, I would recommend looking at the other nearby options. It appears that from most of the other hotels you could reach an entrance to the Galleria in about a block or two's walk and from there you can walk through the mall in comfort to where you need to be. Most of the complaints that I see posted here are related to the age of the hotels and that the "updates" are not much more than new bed linens and curved shower curtain rods, so if you are picky about cleaniness, I would look for a hotel that is fairly new and be wary that "updated" can mean many different things.
I have posted some pictures of both rooms, so you can decide for yourself if there may be some serious issues at this hotel or if I was just being paranoid!