Sonesta ES Suites Birmingham Homewood

I would give this hotel 0 stars if that were an option. I booked this hotel well in advance through Booking.com. I selected the "pay at the property" option and reserved two rooms for my family of 10, including four children. Even though I planned to pay at the hotel, I was still required to provide a credit card when making the reservation in case of a no-show. Before leaving for our trip, I checked Booking.com to confirm that our reservation was still active. After a long day of traveling, we arrived at the hotel around 11:10 PM, exhausted and ready to get some sleep before continuing our trip the next day. When we walked into the lobby, the front desk employee immediately asked if we were at the wrong hotel. I told her we were at the correct location. She then informed me that there were no reservations available for the night. I pulled up my Booking.com confirmation and showed it to her. After looking up my name, she told me that the General Manager had canceled our reservation because they claimed there was no card on file. As a result, at nearly 11:30 PM, my family of 10 had to search Birmingham for another place to stay. We ended up paying an additional $200 and needed to book three rooms instead of the two rooms we had originally reserved. The next morning, I checked my voicemail and spam folder and found that the hotel had attempted to contact me while I was traveling. Unfortunately, the call and voicemail were filtered into spam, so my phone never rang. I do not think it is reasonable for a hotel to cancel confirmed reservations on the day of arrival simply because they could not reach a guest by phone. I had already provided a card when booking, and I had not canceled my reservation before the cancellation deadline. That should have indicated that I fully intended to arrive. This experience left my family stranded late at night and caused us significant inconvenience and additional expense.

They gave my rooms away to people who walked in and needed a room

The room was clean and huge

Location was convenient to family we were visiting. Breakfast was fine.

Lots of little things were disappointing. The experience wasn't horrible, but some of it was just frustrating. In their defense, we didn't complain as we were there for a month and thought complaining would not be to our benefit. We did complain when there was no hot water all day. The boiler broke, and they did change our rooms, but they could have advised us instead of waiting till we spoke up.

The size of the room , The layout of the room. The fact that it had a frig

I have been a guest at this sonesta more times than I can count. I found out it was sold and under new management. When I first arrived. I was told I cant get my room because it was to early, Ok Not a fan but OK. Second I had asked for a first floor room. Didn't get that . When I got to my room. The TV didn't work. had to call maintenance. I went to dinner, and when I came back the lamp on the desk didnt work. Call maintenance again. But this time I called four times and nobody would answer, When I finally got somebody to answer, She put Me on hold for 15 MIns. I finally had to walk down to the from desk and tell her about the lamp. When I took a shower. Thank gosh Im prepared. because the Shampoo and body wash was gone / out. Finally I will have to say . This was the worse experience at this hotel I have ever had. I now will find a new hotel to stay at when in Birmingham.