This past summer, my family visited Seattle. I have a cousin that lives in Kirkland and offered to help us find a place to stay. She found a deal on Groupon for a local hotel that is highly rated, the Woodmark Hotel. The Groupon deal was decent and the hotel looked a step up from the normal places we stay, so I booked a garden view room for 4 nights.
When we arrived, they upgraded us to a lake view room which I thought was great. I was also told that there would be a wedding that evening (at the outdoor venue), but would be coming inside around 8 and then promptly ending at 10 or 11 (I can’t remember the time). I didn’t think that was a problem and they offered us ear plugs if we needed them. They promptly sent me a text saying that if I needed anything, I could text them back which was a neat feature as I don’t like having to talk on the phone or go down to the front desk.
Turns out that our second floor lake view room (which was very nice) was directly overlooking the venue for the wedding which meant we had noise until they went inside. When they did go inside, we could still hear all the noise. The second night was a repeat of the first with another wedding. On the third day, I was done with the noise as I had trouble sleeping the prior 2 nights. I texted the front desk and the person who answered found another room on the 4th floor and asked if I wanted to see it before we moved. My son and I took a look at the room and it was still a lake view room, but further from the wedding venue, so we took it and moved our stuff. The person that helped us was very nice and apologized. He also said it was “wedding season”.
That night we still heard the wedding, but when they went inside we couldn’t hear them anymore. As we were going out that day, I looked on the schedule and only saw someone’s birthday party with nothing in the evening which was a huge relief.
Upon checkout, the person at the desk asked how our stay was. I said not great or something similar and she said “OK” without asking why or what they could have done to make it better. For a relatively small hotel, I expected better.
While I’m sure that the hotel is great for weddings, the layout of the hotel basically gives every lake view room a front row seat to wedding even if you aren’t an invited guest! We’ve stayed in a number of hotels over the years and I’ve never written a review of one in the past; this absolutely poor experience caused me to write this and warn others to not stay at this hotel during “wedding season”. Also, with the exception of the man that moved us to a different room, I didn’t find the staff to be all that friendly. Even with the Groupon rate, the room was not cheap.
I reached out to Groupon and they gave me a 30% credit which was pretty generous in my opinion as they didn’t have to do anything.
Bottom line is to stay elsewhere when visiting Seattle or Kirkland.