Hotel Granduca Austin

Hotel Granduca Austin initially comes across as a beautiful hotel that wants to give an Italian feel. They should have stopped at the design. They also give the inhospitality, lack of communication, unexpected fees, and fraud that tourist Europe is known for. The whole reason for this trip was for my Fiancée and I to see if this would be a good location for a wedding venue for a destination wedding. All it has is that it is a beautiful setting on a beautiful city. That is not enough to overcome what we experienced during our stay. I’d rather hold our wedding and reception at any lower end chain hotel. Issue 1, Communication: When booking our room (Granduca Suite) my Fiancée and I requested early check in and a top floor room. We received no communication to indicate that the hotel couldn’t accommodate these requests. Issue 2, Parking: Self parking is not free. There are many references on yelp and trip advisor (even coming from hotel representatives) that indicate self parking is free. The only complimentary parking is 0-4 hours valet. Issue 3, Early check in: We arrived 1.5 hours early and the room was not available. We had them hold our luggage so we could look around the hotel and wait while the room was being cleaned. Our “early” check in was 15 minutes before check in time. Issue 4, Rudeness: When bringing up the free self parking, the woman at the front desk was completely confused. She refused to acknowledge any 3rd party travel app information. Even the hotel representative information. She made it feel like we deeply offended her and that we didn’t deserve any type of hospitality because of this. Issue 5, Accommodation: We were given the lowest possible floor for the suite we booked. We specifically asked for the top when booking the hotel! Issue 6, Fraud: The room we booked was stated to have “Juliet balconies”. These “balconies” are just ledges with safety railings so you can open a door and not fall out. Googles definition is “a very shallow balcony with a safety railing on an upper story of a building.” This doesn’t even fit into that loose definition. Issue 7, Rudeness 2: We were met with disdain when calling to get our room changed to a higher floor and our dissatisfaction with the “balconies”. We were told that the whole hotel was booked and we couldn’t change rooms, they were on a first come first serve (We arrived early). Then after a few more calls, we were told there was another room and were made to wait another hour before it was ready. Issue 8, Competence: The bed is comfortable and the pillows are soft. Too soft for our liking and we woke up with sore necks. We called down and asked for firmer pillows. It took 4 tries throughout 2 days to get anything that wasn’t the normal pillow. Issue 9, Competence 2/Cleanliness: There was a stain on our blanket and we asked for it to be changed out. We left the room to eat and for housekeeping to replace it. They didn’t. They just made the bed and we had the stain the entire stay. Issue 10, Fraud 2: During all of this, we did get them to drop the fee for self parking. We had verbal confirmation of this. We were still within the complimentary 4 hour valet time. So on check out we were told there was a valet fee and we had to argue that we only had the valet for about 3 hours and that was the only time we used valet. Issue 11, Rudeness 3/Internal communication: On checkout there was a person at the front desk that we weren’t familiar with. When we told her about the self parking she had no clue what we were talking about. Her attitude towards us was the exact same as the woman’s who checked us in and we had to go over the entire argument again.

Trey is the embodiment of professionalism. I’ve been staying at the granduca with my boyfriend for an entire month over the last six months and Trey has been the sole reason we’ve been back over and over again. He goes the extra mile to build relationships with his clientele and it’s something that we truly appreciate!

Fabulous location. A little out of town but it’s a short drive to downtown, malls and restaurants. If you would rather be closer to bars and restaurants then you may want to consider somewhere else as there’s nothing else around the Hotel. However, the staff were very friendly and helpful. We had a conference at the Hotel and while the food was good they did run out during breakfast on occasion but this was sorted out quickly. Overall a lovely place to stay.