Clarion Hotel Historic District

We had the most fun of our trip at the bar with a nice mix of locals and hotel guests. We stayed next door at Patrick Henry Square. The two bartenders are twins (Rhonda and Denise) and are pleasant, informative, patient and are great with all their customers. We imbibed for a few hours but didn’t get any food. The locals were as welcoming as the bar staff, making dining, shopping and entertainment options without bias. Def go here for a friendly cocktail.

I wish I could give a 3.5. Our stay here was overall good, but we had a few weird experiences. For example, the room was great, clean, comfortable, awesome shower pressure, two sinks which was a nice plus, etc. However, the hotel is HUGE and we were in the back corner, so every trip to and from the lobby was a trek. Plus there is not a free breakfast offered, but oh well. The hotel itself is in a great location though, no complaints about that! Easy to walk and drive to the historic stuff.
First thing — Judy at the front desk SAVED us! She was the nicest, sweetest lady, and let us check in at 11 am instead of the usual 4 pm! We had some weird changes to our travel plans and had a really early morning, landed in Norfolk at 10 am exhausted, so I called ahead to see if we could check in early. She helped us switch rooms and got it cleaned before any others so we could check in and nap. I can’t stress how much we appreciated her kindness!
Thank you Judy and the cleaning staff :)
On Friday we were out of the room between 10 am and 2 pm, and I made sure the «do not disturb» sign wasn’t on the door since all the trash cans were full and the beds were unmade, etc. We came back to the room between 2 and 3 and the trash was gone, but there were no new trash bags and the room wasn’t cleaned. At 3 I went down to the lobby to ask if we could get our room cleaned (I said I’d be fine waiting in the lobby for an hour or so) but the cleaning staff was already gone for the day. He gave me trash bags and offered me towels, and was incredibly kind about it, but it made me feel extremely awkward. Also, it took about three tries for them to get our key cards working for our room, which necessitated a few long walks to the front desk for help.
Overall, I definitely recommend this hotel and don’t regret staying there. They are doing renovations right now so I’m sure in he future the rooms will be even nicer. But a few parts of our stay were strange.

Okay where to start? This is my second time staying here for a 3 day scrapbook retreat and this year was the worst. I’ll start with the room. Not enough outlets. There was an orange extension cord coming from behind the bed for the bedside lamp. We had to unplug that to charge one phone while the other phone was plugged into the only other available outlet on the lamp located on the desk. What about my tablet? My ipod? My Bluetooth headphones? We found a second outlet in the bathroom where a blow dryer was sort of zip tie mounted to the wall. The bedside lamp, floor lamp and alarm clock on the opposite side of the room were also sharing an outlet. It was a fun game of checking which item had reached full charge. NEEEXT!
Speaking of the bathroom. There was mold on the grout and a hole in the ceiling where the popcorn stucco was falling apart. When I took a shower I ended up ankle deep in water. Slow drain maybe? Something that housekeeping would definitely notice.
I thought I saw a bug on the desk but I wasn’t really sure but after reading another review I believe I was right.
Now on to breakfast. If I had to pay extra for this I would have been pissed! Last year there was real orange juice and fresh fruit (not JUST apples), biscuits and gravy, sausage. But not this year. The oatmeal looked like it was rice pudding! The bacon had an after taste that I’m still tasting and today is Sunday. Lunch was disappointing. Last year there was pesto and grilled shrimp, a selection of dressings for salad. This year, no shrimp. The pesto was replaced with watery cream of broccoli soup. The alfredo sauce looked like pudding (we were confused by this), the ONE choice of dressing (caesar…mmmmm everyones favorite *insert sarcasm) was filled with ice cubes! One dessert choice of chocolate cake. Last year there was a choice of three dry cakes. Oh! And if I were you I’d stay away from that creamer they are leaving on the table by the complimentary coffee at the entrance. It sat out ALL DAY. No ice in sight for something that should be refrigerated.
The most important thing about this location is the lack of SAFETY. There is an unsecured door that ANYONE can just walk in off the street. A side entrance that is shielded from view by bushes and darkness. You should only be able to walk into a hotel from the front entrance. All other entrances should require a key/​room card of someone who is staying in the hotel! The door is just straight up broken. Come on in! Have a walk around.
The wifi is Bad. We kept getting kicked out. We were texting to communicate. Hope you don’t need to ACTUALLY talk to someone for anything URGENT.
While the front desk staff and dining staff are courteous, friendly and apologetic this does not excuse the lack of maintenance this hotel is in desperate need of (I saw the curtains from rooms that were clearly unoccupied and appeared to have been that way for a length of time. Half hanging and twisted. Not at all how a well kept hotel should be represented).

Run down rooms. Clean linens and bathroom, plus a nice front desk staff, are the only things keeping it from a one star.
Funny: there is a desk in the room with a coffee pot. But there is no outlet for the coffee pot so the cord dangles, and you can’t plug in your laptop if you need to work. In fact, we only found two working outlets, and one is in the bathroom.

The stay back in December started out okay. Knowing I wasn’t paying for a high-​priced hotel, I had realistic expectations of what I was getting — or so I thought. The staff was very friendly and courteous. However, my first warning sign should have been the indoor pool… it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in a while and the water was very dirty. The hot tub also wasn’t working.
The room seemed to be clean at first glance — however, in the morning is when I discovered the real issues. It began when I went to the restroom in the morning and turned on the light — ROACHES scattered. Yikes!!! I killed four of them. After picking all of my bags up off the floor, all I wanted was to get showered and get out of there. Pulled back the shower curtain and there was mold all over the grout! Had I been aware of any of this the night before, I would have checked out and found a new hotel. Upon checking out I showed the front desk the dead roaches I had in tissue and pictures of the mold. They told me they would call their exterminator and that they were preparing for a deep cleaning to take care of the mold. Who rents out rooms, knowing there is mold in the tub? They apologized profusely and were kind enough to offer me a discount on a future stay, but no thank you! I think I should have received at the very least a partial refund on my stay (if not the whole thing).
I later emailed corporate who said I should hear from the hotel within 72 hours. Never did. I emailed corporate again, and never heard back from them.

The pool the pool the pool!!!
A very underrated location. Expect a great experience, great care, amazing pool, in an older model hotel.
Wifi coverage is good, I am at the pool now.
Wifi traffic gets congested at night but almost everywhere does before bedtime.
Not large rooms but perfect for the time when this hotel was built.
Crisp clean linens, great mattresses. And tightly made beds. Modern televisions etc.
Breakfast buffet is $ 10 per and &5.50 for kids but it was perfectly prepared and the waiter was excellent.
Think of it as a twenty year old well maintained Mercedes, it won’t have collision detection like a new Mercedes but it is going to be better than a brand new Chevy any day of the week.
This is the best cared for pool I have had the pleasure of utilizing in a long time. Crystal clear and literally the perfect
temperature. The amount of time and money they spend keeping the water warm and the pool enclosure cool must be enormous and frankly perfectly illustrates that this older hotel spends their money providing its customers with a five star experience instead of spending it on snobby staff and useless trinkets hanging in the walls.

Ok, so we got this place CHEAP on Priceline, but it was still supposed to be 2 ½ stars. Well, the room was reasonably clean, but very small. The amenities in the bath (soaps etc) were woefully undersized for a family of four. The property is old, and not exactly maintained well. Breakfast is onsite, but very pricey. we opted for a local diner we knew of. The biggest problem was the beds. They were full sized. For a family of four. They were also old and had visible depressions in them, completely wore out. If you get it really cheap like we did, fine. But if I had paid what they normally charge I would have been livid. Ok for one night, but I wouldn’t want to spend any longer here.

This was a very old hotel and seems like it is ran into the ground. Couple issues: hot tub was not working, spider found in bed, dead cockroach by trash can was never picked up for the three days I was there, and water leaks everywhere. They really need to renovate this hotel. I would suggest finding a different place to stay.

If a hotel bed causes me to wake up with a backache… it pretty much receives the lowest rating from me. I loveee hotels… I don’t know why, but I just do. They’re usually really comfortable and who doesn’t like having their room cleaned up for them?
Well, I didn’t love this hotel one bit. Now… I wasn’t expecting much because my mom booked this 2.5 star hotel for extremely cheap. My expectations were low, but not THAT low. The staff was okay. The lady we spoke to upon checking out was pretty helpful and apologized for our experience.
What bothered us the most was the construction! Literally right outside our window… construction going on at 7:30AM! Now, most people book hotels because of a vacation and one of the things I enjoy most about vacations is not having to set an alarm to wake up. Well, the drilling going on outside my window that morning was worst than an alarm clock. To top that off, we had the do not disturb sign on our door, but the housekeeper still came knocking around 8:30AM.
Now, I will have to say that the room itself was not ALL that bad besides the bed being extremely uncomfortable. And the ceilings seemed a bit dirty. perhaps a little mold is what was forming up there? But I didn’t see any bugs, so that’s a plus!
Not to be a snob, but I think I’ll stick to 3.5 stars and up from now on.

The hotel is ok @ best. Six of us ate @ bourbon street grill in the hotel last night… not a good experience… the other five got there meals and finished them before mine even arrived… I sent it back… waiting an hour for chicken is not very appealing.

My experience was mixed. The front desk attendant was very friendly and efficient, but my loyalty number couldn’t be added to my room because we’d booked a group package. The mattresses were in excellent condition and the linens were very clean but two full size beds didn’t accommodate three adults comfortably. The shower had lots of hot water and great water pressure, the towels are full sized and fairly thick, but the room is tiny, (I mean really, really small. I have a half bath at home that has more room to maneuver in.) and there is no fan. There’s a vent though, so the lack of a fan makes no sense. The room was very clean, except for the floor that had clearly not been vacuumed in quite some time.
The hotel has an indoor pool (1000 — 2200), but it’s not listed on the hotel website. We did not have the opportunity to test the wifi, use the pool, or try the restaurant or lounge.

I give two stars for a very friendly staff and the room being clean. Otherwise, this place was a bit of a dump. The restaurant had very nice staff but the food was terrible. Came out cold and undercooked. Don’t eat here. It’s not worth it. The «indoor» pool is in a glorified green house which you can’t use if it’s thundering and lighting out. All in metal and it’s not grounded. What’s the point of an indoor pool if you still can’t swim in it due to weather? It is also absolutely freezing in temp in August. The elevator rarely worked as well. The hallways were very grotty looking. Location is great for things to do but I’d never stay again. I’ve stayed in several Clarions so I was really disappointed by this one.

Good price (we did a hotel/​flex pass combo) Clean rooms, friendly staff, and had good water pressure & HOT water no matter the time! Restaurant on site but we didn’t eat there, so can’t say anything about it. Free WiFi only bad side is had to keep signing in every time we came back to hotel. Within 10 – 15 miles of Busch Gardens and Water Country USA, and downtown Williamsburg. Would definitely go back!

Stayed here one night after fleeing a different hotel that was horrible. Here the staff are very nice but this place needs a serious overhaul. It is very dated and not very clean. It worked in a pinch is all I can say. Oh the ac didn’t work. Like at all.

This place is awful. The staff is nice but the place is dirty and falling apart. Went to open the closet door and it fell off in my hand. Ice machine dispenses dirty ice. Iron full of some kind of black soot. Carpet disgusting. No clean glasses from housekeeping. All basically garbage. Stay at the Days Inn down the road; way cheaper and much, much nicer!

I used Priceline to name my own price, feeling safe that I would get a quality hotel by choosing to go with a certain star rating. Unfortunately, this place has somehow snuck in under the radar and is NOT as nice as the star rating would indicate.
The location is fantastic, the exterior not bad and the lobby is very nice looking, but as soon as you step into the hallways, it all goes downhill. The hallways were dark with lights out, dingy and very dirty with an unpleasant stagnant/​musty smell. Dirty dishes from room service, set outside people’s rooms, sat for hours and hours.
My room was on the third floor. As I walked into the room, it felt a little claustrophobic because of how cramped the entryway was. The bathroom and entry are very tiny. The rest of the room is about as large enough for two beds and a few pieces of furniture, but nothing fancy. The beds were not particularly comfortable and the pillows were horrible.
My room overlooked the pool area and even with my air conditioning on there was no drowning out the screaming and yelling going on down there. Thankfully, it quieted down after 9, but until then it was quite the racket.
The carpets in my room, though dark and patterned, still showed lots of stains. There were white stains on my duvet (UGH!). There was peeling paint on the door and stains on the shabby wallpaper. One of the two coffee cups had so many chips on it, I didnt use it in fear of cutting my mouth. The water glasses were streaked in a way that was very unclean looking.
Customer service was not great. When I checked it, I was met by a very surly young woman who never smiled, was very curt and seemed annoyed when I had questions. When I checked out, I had to wait for several moments while the woman was talking on the phone. She stared at me, quite rudely, then, once she was off the phone, was barely civil. On several occasions while walking down the hall I had to wait for staff to move out of the way while they gossiped and carried on without greeting or acknowledging passing people.
The elevator broke down several times while I was there. I did not visit the restaurant or order room service.

I was very satisfied with my stay at the Clarion Hotel. Very close to the historic district and an easy walk. The staff was friendly and rate was very reasonable. Room was not super fancy, but was clean and had a refrigerator/​microwave. This is not a B&B, but gets the job done if you want a reasonable priced hotel. For less than $ 100/​night, couldn’t have asked for anything more.

I’m a Choice Hotels rewards member, so I choose from Quality Inn, Comfort Inn, Clarion, etc. when selecting a hotel. Although not the worst Choice Hotels stay I’ve had, it is up there.
The elevator only worked about half the time. It would usually get stuck on a floor and you would have to use the stairs. The bathtub drain plug was broken, so I couldn’t take a bath because all the water would drain out of the tub. There was black mold in the grout of the tiles in the shower stall. The bed was old and made my husband and I lean towards the middle. The furnishing were nice other than the bed.
The Bourbon Bar & Grille inside the hotel is fine for drinks in the bar, but I wouldn’t eat the food. We did like the fact that this hotel offers room service, but the food was gross. We ordered the Creole Eggs Benedict, fresh fruit bowl and a croissant. The hollandaise sauce was sour like lemon juice and thick as gravy, the «fresh» fruit bowl was gross because all the different fruits had been sitting together in juice for who knows how long and they were all soggy and tasted the same. My husband was irked that his croissant was cut in half and toasted, not fresh.
The front desk was friendly and we enjoyed the free coffee in the waiting area, but we would not stay here again.

Pricelined a room here for $ 45/​night for 2 nights. With taxes and all, it probably came out to $ 60/​night.
I was a bit uneasy after reading the reviews here and on TripAdvisor. I prayed to the Cleaning Gods that the room would be clean.
The room was decent. It was clean, at least. It came with 2 beds, a desk, dresser, TV, and fridge. They offer HBO but no sound on for that channel.
Housecleaning came around midday. I swore that one of the towels that I had placed on the floor to be refreshed was folded up and placed back on the rack. Yuck.
So who knows if they even remove the sheets after the previous visitors. This is not something I want to think about though.
Location is close to College of William and Mary, Jamestown Settlement, and Busch Gardens (reason for stay).
The hotel is attached to a bar called Bourbons which has karaōke on Friday night. We didn’t check it out but when we had arrived, you could hear it. It looked like one hopping place.
They also have a pool but we didn’t get to use it.
Overall, if you can get a cheap rate then I would recommend it for a night. But if you are staying longer, I would pay a bit more and stay something a little nicer.
Staff was nice. The gentleman who checked us in had a voice like Cleveland from Family Guy.

I had no input in choosing this hotel; the boyfriend did (made the reservation on the good reviews he read and the proximity to Colonal Williamsburg). Based on our experience, he has decided that he is just going to let me make all the hotel reservations in the future and just give me the credit card. So, uh… thanks Clarion?
For being a Clarion, this looked really dumpy on the outside. Our room was on the back of the hotel, on the second floor (which you have to take an elevator to get too). We checked in shortly after 4 PM, and the cleaning people were still doing rooms. The hallways are dark and dingy, there is a stale smell to the place, and you can tell that the interior needs rehabbed in a BAD way. The elevator was sketchtastic; thankfully we only had to go one floor. We got put down at the end of the hall near the exit door, which is a good thing. Once in the room, we were a little surprised since the bed and the furnishings and the bathroom seemed brand new. In fact, I commented to the BF that I would actually like to take the comforter and the mirror hanging over the desk. As we went to sit the key on the desk, we noticed that there was an open bag of potato chips still on the desk. This made me question how well the room had really been cleaned.
The bed was comfy. The air conditioner worked really well. The shower/​bathroom was spotless and the water pressure was great. The Wifi worked extremely fast. The TV, though… that was a big problem. The remote was all busted up, and the batteries were taped on with electrical tape. It also didn’t work. So, you had to manually change the channel; ¾ of the time, the stations were all staticy. Luckily I like South Park, and got to watch the best South Park episode ever (Taco Flavored Kisses, anyone?) That episode actually led to more bonding between me and the BF… don’t worry, it’s not worth the explanation or your time, but it will definitely make a memory for us.
Prior to checkout, the BF went downstairs to get his free continental breakfast he was told about when he checked in. Turns out the breakfast was not free. He was not amused. I passed.
If we had paid $ 50 -$ 60 for this, I’d say maybe stay here. We paid double that which it is in no way worth. Save your money and go elsewhere.