Beverly Hills Plaza Hotel - Los Angeles, USA     

Based on my previous experience, I returned for a nine day stay over the Christmas 2007 holiday. Again, found the hotel clean, staff helpful, room service good, accomodations pleasant and location good for Beverly Hills & Westwood & Century City. THe update is this: first, they are building some big apartment building across the street. The pile drivers and saws started early...at least up until the day before Christmas. Be aware that this construction looks to be going on for some time to come...though the noise from it will likely deminish as time goes on. However, we found it difficult to stay asleep much beyond 7:30 am on the days they were working (especially true if you open the windows to let in fresh air). Second, hotel re-habbing is ongoing. THe main lobby area has been closed off. One of the elevators wasn't working. Clearly some rooms were in the process of being re-done. They said they were looking at a copule of months work...then they would be raising their rates to about $375 per room per night (above the very reasonable for location and siize I paid). Still the accomodations were a better bargain than some other suite hotels in the area...but the potential price increase will move it out of the good deal catagory. Third, when we were there in October, our room had a regular matress that was one of the more comfortable hotel beds my wife and I ever slpet in. This time, we had one of those temperpedic (sp?) matresses...i.e. foam that seems to mold around your body. Far less happy with that...though I am sure some like it. It felt like we were sleeping on sand and also made the bed hot, IMO. Much perferred the old-style matress, this would cause us to reconsider staying there again as we never felt we got a great night sleep. Fourth, the water pressure in our room was problematic. There were problems, when we mentioned it to the desk they seemed to hop to and get it fixed, but it seems like more problems with water pressure were looming, given the hotel re-habbing. Overall, we continue to like this hotel. Having a full kitchen available as well as living room and eat-in dinning room for the price we paid in Beverly Hills/Westwood was terrific. We gave it a higher rating the first time we stayed. It is still a good hotel, but price and conditions may reduce its desirability, affordability and many of its good points.

I stayed for four nights while doing business in the area. I booked a non-smoking room. My room wasn't ready when I arrived. When the room was ready, the room was a smoking room. There were no non-smoking rooms available until the next night, so I stayed the first night in the smoking room, which smelled like an ash tray. That night a noisy party started up at about 2:00 a.m. I called the front desk, and after about an hour a security guard shut down the party. The next three nights I stayed in a non-smoking room. The carpet was filthy and stained, so much so that I didn't go barefoot in the room! On the positive side, the front desk staff, and the restaurant/bar staff were friendly and helpful.