Great Hotel cursed by a remote location
I stayed at the W Silicon Valley on Memorial Day Weekend 2005. The hotel was exactly as the pictures on the W Hotels website described it to be. The rooms were spacious, the TVs were enormous, and hotel lobby was trendy-shiek, and the service was excellent.
So a few examples of the Great:
-Our king size bed was probably the best bed I've ever slept on. And I've travelled to nice hotels in over 25 countries.
-I requested a DVD player because we weren't in a Business Suite and they added one before I arrived for free.
-If you like Bliss Spa, all the bathroom products are from there. Stock up!
-A shower with 2 shower-heads...
-I booked using my Starwood Prefered account, so the price was very affordable $130/night. No way I could get the same price at a different W Hotel.
Some of the Not-So-Great:
-The bath tub was shallow compared to ones i've seen in comparable class hotels.
-The pool area is clean, but the "beach-like" feeling is too artificial and they never used the fireplace when we were there.
And the Bad:
Location, location, location. I went to college in the Bay Area and Newark aka "Silicon Valley", is in the middle of nowhere. It's across the dumbarton bridge from Palo Alto (Stanford Univ.) and close to most of the Hi-Tech companies, but if you are travelling for leisure don't expect to be less than 30 minutes from any major attraction. The weekend rates are lower for a reason since mostly business men occupy the rooms on weekdays. You can even see parts of the Sun Microsystem offices from the pool area, thus ruining the ambiance.
Overall, if you're willing to drive to where you need to go, the W Silicon Valley highlights its great service and awesome room and is definitely worth the value.
