South Congress Hotel

The Poolside room was marketed as having a bedroom area and a living area. I choose this room at this hotel for this reason because my boyfriend and my stay was Saturday to Wednesday, and we both needed to work and be on calls Mon/Tues/Wed. The room does not have different areas; the room is one large room with a 3/4 high bookcase in the middle, which made having two different business calls in the room impossible. This is exacerbated by the room's echo and reverberation, since the walls/floor/ceiling are hard flat surfaces. Working on the patio was not an option due to the traffic and leaf blowing noise. I asked the front desk for a room with truly separate areas and they said there weren't any. I asked the front desk if there was a quiet space one of us could use during business hours and the front desk said all conference rooms were booked, except for Sunday morning, The front desk reminded me I prepaid and that they would only be able to give me a credit for a future stay if I needed to change hotels; this option was not useful since I don't have plans to come to Austin again and the hotel is not part of a chain. My boyfriend ended up having to take calls in the hallway, which was disappointing for him and probably irritating to other third floor guests. These additional, less impactful issues magnified the negative experience: - one of the two elevators was out of service during the entire stay -when we returned from dinner our first night (Saturday), the TV turned on but there were no channels. The front desk sent someone up who tried to get it to work and eventually gave up, saying he was new and that all the 'engineers' were gone for the day. I asked him if they could send someone up when the 'engineers' were back in the morning and he told me it would be better if I could just call back tomorrow -my boyfriend ended up buying shampoo since the shampoo that was provided left a weird oily film for each of us that you just couldn't get rinsed out. When I book a suite at the W or Marriott, I actually get separate areas that we actually require and there was no particular value add in having oddly shaped furniture and a bare concrete ceiling.

Great spot Pool bar was disappointing

SCH is one of my favorite hotels in Austin. Classy and cool and in a perfect location for exploring South Congress as well as the surrounding neighborhoods (Travis Heights, Bouldin Creek). If you're willing to splurge, don't skip out on their candle.