Chicago Ritz Carlton [Master Thread]
 

Just saw this posted on the luxury hotels board:

"On July 31, 2015, Four Seasons will be concluding its management of The Ritz-Carlton Chicago (A Four Seasons Hotel). Effective August 1, 2015, the Hotel will become a full participant in the Ritz-Carlton system. This means that the Hotel will no longer be a Ritz-Carlton in name only, but it will be a part of the Ritz-Carlton family of hotels."

Could be a new interesting option.

Excellent!! Thank you for the heads up. Stayed here once hears ago and would love to go back with Ritz Carlton benefits, club upgrade from Ritz card...

Top-shelf property. It will be good to have it fully in the RC family.

That's awesome news.

Great news for sure!

15 more days!!!

Maybe this is in the other post (I couldn't find the link), but looks like Sage will do the management under the RC-Marriott side.

Extensive renovation to come, but no ownership change of the hotel itself (just the management change aforementioned).

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/reale...ive-renovation

Rasheed

You can officially book the Ritz in Chicago via the Marriott website!

It seems there are no club rooms.

I think they carried over all the 4 season's reservations...

Official press release about it being live/part of Marriott now:

http://news.marriott.com/2015/08/thi...el-system.html

Noticed in the release the following:

"The hotel will undergo an extensive renovation of its public space and guest rooms over the next two years."

looking at staying here in December, but it looks like no points stays are available. however, base rooms (city view room) are available to book. I thought there are no black-out dates when using points? Is this not the case at this property?

has anyone else had issues booking this property since the conversion?

Ritz Carlton Chicago
 

Introduction Had a one-night stay. Booked a lake view king. I am a Marriott Platinum as part of the SPG matching program, which they mentioned at check in.At check in, I received a room at the John Hancock end of the hallway on likely the lowest floor that could pass for a 'lake view'. As I was headed to dinner and leaving relatively early the next day, I decided that complaining wasn't worth the energy. To be clear, my complaint would have been that I don't believe that I even received the best room available in the category that I booked, nevermind some sort of upgrade. For those that haven't stayed here, the JH building blocks the view, at least partially, when you are on that end of the hallway. I was as far down to that side as possible.I probably would have just let this go, but to add to it, starting at like 7:30am, there was a combination of noise both outside the room as well as above/next door. There was some sort of repairs being conducted in either the room next to me or upstairs (scraping and banging). There was also an elevator 'bing' noise, which I believe came from the service elevator. That service door was left open througout the evening and into the morning (the regular elevators are too far away to have made the noise).The lobby is also under construction, but I knew that when I booked it.

For whatever it is worth, I received a nice note from the General Manager. I would certainly be willing to give the hotel another try.

I made the mistake of booking a prepaid rate on the Marriott site for this hotel (I NEVER book prepaid) and now have found out that the hotel is under renovation. There was no mention of this when I booked, so I called Marriott guest care now to see if I could cancel and be refunded due to the renovations. They called the property and were told "We can't refund pre-paid reservations. And that's the final answer". Wow! Hopefully the actually hotel experience can make up for this extremely negative pre-stay experience. I did notice that Marriott.com now says that the hotel pool is undergoing a "refreshing", but makes no mention of a hotel-wide upgrade. Weird.