My husband and I stayed in the Benson Hotel for one night in March 2007. The hotel is lovely. After reading some of the prior reviews, I thought the room would be small but was pleasantly surprised at the size. The bed was had a tempur-pedic mattress which was wonderfully comfortable. The bathroom was small, but had a nice selection of toiletries, including shampoo, conditioner, soap, lotion, mouthwash and a mending kit. We booked the room through Priceline. The hotel was able to accomodate our request for a king size bed, but not for a non-smoking room. The smell was pretty mild though and not a problem. We ended up parking at the structure across the street which worked out fine and saved a bit of money. The only disappointment was that the beautiful lobby is being remodeled, so not only is half of it closed, the jazz band that usually plays on Wed - Sat nights was taking a hiatus. We also took the advice from a previous review and had dinner at Andina's and had an excellent meal. Be sure to make reservations.

If sleek and modern is what you are looking for, this is not the place. Room was a little on the smallish side but you would expect that in an older hotel. Same with the bathroom, not a lot of room but functional and clean. Robes in the closet along with an umbrella in case you should need it...nice touch. Bedding was comfortable. They are doing some renovations in the lobby area right now. Sunday brunch looked awesome but was a bit pricey if you just wanted a standard breakfast. We elected to head down to Mother's for breakfast and it was great, good food and great staff. Had breakfast in the hotel on Monday and it was very good, great coffee, too! Only problem we encountered was that there is some sort of recycling facility on the Oak Street side of the hotel, which is the side our room faced. The trucks cranked up at about 5 AM and was it every loud!! Overall, good experience.

Service, service, service...at check-in we were told that our room was not ready. It was approximately 3:30pm on a Sunday. Ok, no problem. We were told to check back in 30 minutes so we took a walk downtown enjoying our little getaway and were still in a great mood. We returned back to the hotel approximately 4:30 and were told by reception that they were "checking on our room" so I waited, and waited...we were then told to have a seat. I asked them what was happening and were told they were "checking"...It was going to take another 30 minutes. I was then told that guaranteed check-in was not until 5:00 p.m. It turns out that check-out time is not until 1:00pm and on that day they had a big group all checking out and there was no way they were going to get all those rooms cleaned for us to check in before 5:00. At this point I was quite upset. If they had told us this originally, we would have left and done something productive, but now we had been killing time for 1 1/2 hours because they kept telling us to check back in half an hour. We decided to go to the bar area for a drink and waited a substantial amount of time before a bartender showed up. Once we finally made it to our room (after 5:00pm) we were pleased with our room. Unfortunately, our experience at the front desk put a cloud over our stay...our room was more than $200 per night plus $25 to valet the car. Because of the poor service we will not return...sometimes it's not about the money...it's the service or lack thereof.

Our first room smelled like stale smoke and was dark and we asked to be in a non-smoking room and they accommodated the request. The next room was right of SW Broadway. It was bright, clean and much larger. I thought it would be noisy by the street but it wasn't too bad. The concierge is excellent - he has given us great recommendations. They have valet parking for $24/night. The first night we parked across the street in the parking garage for $20/night. It was hard to get in/out of and not worth it. Park at the hotel. It is centrally located to everything.

Check out Mother's Bistro & Bar for the best breakfast you have ever had and Andina's for a Peruvian dinner experience.