The Stephen F Austin Royal Sonesta Hotel

Location, location, location sums up this place. You will overpay for your room here considering the dated condition of the room and lack of services, but you are paying for convenience. Bring your own shampoo and soap, because the provided shampoo barely made a lather. The breakfast cafe is painfully slow. An omelet in an empty cafe shouldn’t take 30 minutes, so skip it and go some place else and just grab and go something if you have a busy day. Not sure if all the hotels in downtown Austin are in this condition, but I have had better stays in far less expensive hotels.

We loved the hotel upon arrival! It’s beautiful and has a lot of charm. However, once we got to our room, the bathroom lights didn’t work. We told the bellhop and he said he would contact the engineer to have it fixed. That didn’t happen, but they finally cut on after pressing the button quite a few times. The restaurant downstairs “Roaring Fork” was delicious but we didn’t get to save our leftovers because we didn’t have a fridge, nor a microwave to heat them. Once we were finished with dinner, we wanted to spend some time in the hot tub, but it was out of order and the pool was freezing cold. We were charged double for parking because we have a truck. We made our complaints to front desk about it all, but all we received was attitude. As beautiful as this hotel is, we won’t be returning. We will find somewhere else to spend $200 a night that has the amenities we look for in a hotel.