Renaissance Portsmouth Hotel Review (Norfolk, VA area)
In early April I took a business trip to Norfolk, VA and stayed 2 nights at the Renaissance Portsmouth Hotel & Waterfront Conference Center in Portsmouth, VA. The Renaissance Portsmouth is located on the Elizabeth River, directly across from downtown Norfolk.
For those people that are going to downtown Norfolk for business or pleasure, there is a ferry that leaves adjacent to the hotel every 30 minutes, and will take you to downtown Norfolk for $1.50. Pretty convienent, and a nice ride — much better than trying to drive over the bridges or through the tunnels of Norfolk during rush hour.
The hotel itself would appear to be relatively new, has 16 stories, 244 rooms, and a fairly large conference center.
Arriving at the hotel is a somewhat odd experience, because the valet and parking garage is on the “land” side of the hotel, while the lobby and check-in desk is on the “water” side of the hotel, which means you have to walk down a pretty lengthy hallway before arriving in the lobby to check-in. Although once arriving in the lobby it is pretty nice. The lobby is decorated in a modern style, lot’s of intriguing sofa’s and lounge chairs, and a long table with 6 free computers (running Windows Vista interestingly enough). Adjacent to the lobby is also the hotel’s restaurant and bar. The bar was pretty packed both nights that I was there, but the restaurant was mostly empty.
I was given room 1415 — which seemed to be a normal room. As a platinum member I would have expected to be at least on the Concierge floors (15, and 16) but I guess 14 is close. The room itself was small, but functional and well appointed. There was a king-size bed with soft white sheets. A flat screen television with the Marriott video inputs. A desk, and a psyhiatrists office style sofa near the window. The view out of the window was quite nice with views of downtown Norfolk and the Elizabeth river. Based on the positioning and design of the hotel a majority of the rooms have a view of the river.
A nice touch from the housekeeping staff was a note that the write when coming in for the evening turn-down service that said “Please continue to enjoy your stay” and had 2 chocolates placed next to the note.
The concierge lounge was open weekdays for breakfast 6am-10am, and for evening snacks and desert from 5pm-10pm. The breakfast was pretty good, they had one or two hot items each morning. The first morning there were breakfast sandwiches with egg and bacon on a crossaint, and the second morning there was scrambled eggs with cheese. For the dinner snack there was one hot item, it was mini pizza slices the evening I was there. They also had asparagus spears, and assorted cheeses. The evening desert seemed to be cookies and brownies — and although the cookies were baked in the lounge, still would have been nice to have something a little more.
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