My wife started 16 days of holiday vacation Saturday and our first outing was a parent gift to see comedian Wayne Brady at the Improv in San Jose. No better excuse for a hotel stay and Kelley needed her Radisson Big Night Giveaway stay for 50,000 points with a Radisson hotel stay by December 30, 2011. I booked her into the Radisson San Jose Airport for Saturday night.
Rates at the airport were as low as $75.60 for AAA Sleep Number bed, but for $99 we could have a one bedroom suite and for $114 a one bedroom suite with jacuzzi tub.
So I went all in and booked the full suite with jacuzzi tub. We planned on meeting friends for the comedy show and space to let the teachers get loose seemed like a grand plan for an apres-theater party.
Radisson San Jose Airport SJC
The hotel has free shuttle for the airport and is located along a stretch of road between Highway 101 and the airport with several other midscale hotel brands.
The lobby is nicely furnished, but small. The restaurant and bar are comfortable spaces. The bar has a great deal with 4-7pm Happy Hour every night of the week with 50% off drinks and appetizers. $2.50 for draft Stella Artois is my kind of bar.
There are large wall photo urban images around the hotel like on the lobby ceiling and the walls in the elevator hallways.
We checked into the hotel and received our keys to Room 306 of the five story hotel. There are two elevators and when we entered the elevator I took a mental note to photograph the inside. That elevator never returned again during my stay. The interior looked like someone had a fit of rage and kicked the shit out of the panels. So I didn’t get a photo since I only rode in the elevator the one time.
We had a long walk down the hallways and came to double doors for room 306.
Excitement to see what is behind the door is an anticipation I still get at every hotel I visit for the first time.
I still can’t get over the TV cabinet as my first image of this room. Apparently the interior decorator for the suite shops Goodwill. My wife talks about shabby chic as a design style, but this is a bit extreme. This piece of furniture sorely needs a little polish.
Even more odd is the fact the TV is positioned six inches off the floor and was not even easily viewed from the couch in the room. I had to pull the TV away from the wall to see the screen from the couch.
The sitting room was spacious no doubt. There was quite a bit of empty space in the room. A microwave, empty refrigerator, sink, coffee maker and table with three chairs were nice features. The couch looked like it also came from Goodwill hunting. The couch was more comfortable than it looked.
The table beside the couch had a similar looking wider mate on the opposite wall with a rolling desk chair.
I spent a few hours working at the desk Sunday morning. My computer mouse kept snagging on the loose pieces of wood tile on the desk surface. The wireless internet was so slow that I would click a page and go get some coffee or go to the bathroom or do some stretches while waiting for the webpage to load.
Radisson offers a 100% Guest Satisfaction Gaurantee. I would have probably gone back to the desk and asked to see another room if we had not needed to rush off to a theater show. In principle though, requesting a better room should have been unnecessary. I booked the most expensive, highest category room they offered at the hotel. That a Radisson Hotel would have a suite in this kind of condition is astounding to me. This kind of room needs to be publicly exposed.
The Bedroom
There was less to complain about with the bedroom of Suite 306. The furnishings looked better.
Radisson San Jose Airport – Suite 306 Jacuzzi Bathroom
I paid an extra $15 for the jacuzzi tub suite at $114 when there was the option of a suite without the jacuzzi tub for $99.
We never used the tub.
The water was too cold for my shower to get me warmed up in the morning. Kelley complained the shower head was so low that it required her to bend over to rinse her hair. There was nothing too special about the shower head.
The double sinks are a nice feature.
The noise I kept hearing in the bathroom sounded like the typical noise heard when people take showers in hotels. Turned out the loud water noise was the toilet running. There were several times during our stay I had to go and jiggle the toilet handle to stop the running water noise.
All in all I think this was the first time I have ever stayed in a hotel suite that I was too emabarassed to bring up guests. We met our friends before the theater show in the bar by the hotel lobby.
The bar has great happy hour prices. The seating in the bar is another area where I found discomfort. Look in the picture below and you see there are two kinds of chairs at these tables. We sat at a table with the chairs with vertical rods in the seat back. I had to grab the horizontal style chair since I found the taller chair to be quite uncomfortable to sit on.
RSVP44 Restaurant at Radisson San Jose Airport
The restaurant was the nicest looking space at the hotel. Kelley slept in at the hotel and we missed the breakfast time ending at 11am. Breakfast was not included in our rate.
Fitness Facilities
Radisson San Jose Airport has an outdoor pool and fitness center. December 18 was one of the coldest mornings of the year in San Jose and nobody was using the pool. It is a small pool.
The fitness center is past the business offices and has a connecting door to the pool area. Lots of mirrors give the appearance the room is larger. I think the space is rather small for a 300 room hotel.
Although I failed to get a photo of the beat up elevator, I did snap this photo of the hallway ceiling just outside the fitness room. There are hazard signs in the hallway to the fitness room and wastebaskets collecting water dripping from the ceiling. Must be an inside problem since we haven’t seen rain for some time around here.
Radisson San Jose Airport Review Conclusion
Carlson Hotels has a five-year improvement plan launched in 2010 called Ambition 2015. A key component of this plan is to improve the image of the Radisson Hotel brand in the U.S. Last month I was at three Radisson Hotels and these were all hotels I have no hesitation in recommending to readers of Loyalty Traveler if you find yourself in Santa Maria, Chicago or Buena Park by Disneyland.
TripAdvisor.com ranks Radisson San Jose Airport as #35 of 72 hotels in San Jose with 66 reviews. The latest four reviews from the past month are all bad for this hotel. I’ll add my thumbs down for this hotel to the list. The TripAdvisor reviews mention several of the problems I had like running toilet and a Sleep Number bed that the control is extremely loud and only works decently for one side of the bed. My main complaint was the crap furniture in what the hotel calls a jacuzzi one bedroom suite.
I’ll likely go back to this hotel in the future for the happy hour special, but I’ll be checking into a different hotel when I want a decent room for the night around San Jose Airport.
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