The Arlington Hotel, Brant

We checked in at 1:30 p.m. on Christmas Day, and the room we were assigned had not yet been made up. The employee at the front desk assured us it would be taken care of by the time we returned from Christmas dinner with our family. We returned at 11:30 p.m. to find that the room had still not been made up -- bed was unmade, used wine glasses on a tray on a side table, towels on the bathroom floor, with a desiccated bar of hand soap sitting on the bathroom sink, suggesting the room had not been attended to in some time. Further to previous comment about the musty smell, there was a HEPA filter unit, switched on. We returned to the lobby, where another staff member was just turning out the lights and preparing to lock the front door. He seemed unsurprised that the room had not been made up; he told us that there had been no housekeeping staff on duty all day. With some difficulty (our strong feeling is that neither of the people we dealt with was properly trained to work the front desk of a hotel), he changed our room assignment. I inspected the room, and it was a slight improvement. This time the bed had been made, but there were only enough towels for one person. The carpet hadn't seen a vacuum in some time, and the bathroom had been cleaned, but fixtures were marked with water spots. It was shabby, but at least inhabitable. The experience was particularly disappointing because we have stayed there at Christmas on several other occasions, and never had anything remotely resembling a problem. The second employee we dealt with mentioned that the hotel recently hired a new manager. I replied that it might be time for a NEW new manager.