Research Your Hotel Options At Hotelinspector.com
100% Hotel Reviews
No Reservations Offered
Just info, opinions, recommendations... and THE BRUTAL TRUTH

Phone: 215-563-1600

Street Address: 99 South 17th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

* Highly Regarded For Their Beds, Which They Sell! A Popular Choice For Wedding Celebrations *

Location Rating: Excellent. Connects to the classy Liberty Place Mall. Excellent shopping and restaurant district. Major skyscrapers are in close proximity. Numerous theaters within easy walking distance. Three blocks from Rittenhouse Square Park.

Lobby Appearance: Classy, upscale, with attractive marble surfaces.

Room Appearance: Light-colored. All white linens on bed, white comforter. The beds look very, very comfortable. New. Crisp. Clean. They call them "The Heavenly Bed." And you can buy a king size bed from them for $3000. Lots of marble in the suite bathrooms. All the bathrooms are comfortable. And suites have a second bathroom (with no bath). I especially liked the sliding dual doors which can separate the living room from the bedroom. That is useful if business is being conducted in the living room portion of the suite. Rooms have unusual city views with close-up views of modern skyscrapers and other tall inner city buildings. Furniture is a classical style.

Useful Nearby Businesses: Without stepping outside you can walk into "The Shops At Liberty Place," which is an upscale mall at the base of the big Liberty Place Towers. It includes a food court with sit-down areas to enjoy a meal. And there is so much else nearby.

Hotel Restaurants: They have an elegant, fairly spacious restaurant on the third floor which has no windows. The sales manager who showed me the hotel told me the restaurant does not have the hustle and bustle of the typical restaurant in Center City. Since it is on the third floor, people do not spontaneously walk in from off the street. He said it is a good place to do a job interview or to have a business meeting with somebody because of its quiet, calm ambiance. A bar is also there, plus a gas fireplace. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Other Amenities: Besides high speed internet access, dual line phones, guest voice mail, and an in-room coffee maker with Starbucks Coffee, and the usual other things, they also have room safes that can hold a laptop computer, a bathrobe, and super dooper beds. The beds are so good that Westin has gotten into the bedding business. Guests can buy the mattresses, bedding, pillows. The bed business was an $8 million dollar business for them last year, if I heard that correctly.

The bathrooms are nice. A new thing that good hotels have now is curved shower curtain rods to give more maneuvering room when taking a shower. Something I haven't seen before in Philadelphia is a dual head shower apparatus. It is 2 shower heads on one water feed. These are available for purchase too. So if you stay here and love the bed and dual head shower thing, you can place an order for these items.

They have a good gym which includes free weights, plus other muscle building equipment and running/biking machines that each have flat screen televisions. The hotel has a nice little business center

Would I Stay Here? Yes, and I think I would sleep very well.

Comments: This 15 story, 290 room hotel first opened November 5, 1990 as the Ritz Carlton Hotel. They moved and the hotel became a St. Regis Hotel for a year. Then it became this Westin Hotel and they have been operating under this name for 5 years. They consider the hotel to be very secure since everyone walking in can be seen by the reception desk and nobody can get on an elevator unless they have a key card. Of their 290 rooms, 3 are handicap accessible rooms. It seems they do a fair number of weddings. The hotel has an elegant charm to it, so I can see why.

I liked the Westin Philadelphia. It's very comfortable. And they are full service. In 2005 they will be doing some renovations and this hotel will be the new prototype for Westin.