Clarion Hotel And Conference Center

I stayed at this hotel for a couple of days in the summer of 2014. Terrible experience with a girl who worked at the front desk. She was repeatedly rude. Other than that, the room was clean and the bathroom was clean. Good breakfast. But the attitude at the front desk of the one attendant ruined the experience for me.

I needed a one night stay, sleeping only. I wasn’t interested in the pool, I didn’t need room service, just a good bed and a quiet room. The only good thing I can say about this place is that the woman at the front desk was great. She was polite, helpful and pleasant. After that… yikes. The hotel was obviously more of a motel in a previous life, partially retrofitted to be a jerry rigged indoor arrangement. The outside doors were not keyed to allow only guests, or if they were, they weren’t working. My room had a smell I can only describe as «funky» and everything felt either damp or sticky. I was afraid to walk on the carpet. The bathtub filled up as the shower ran and while the pressure was good, the water would randomly decide to become scalding without warning. No amount of fiddling with the faucet made any difference. The wifi was not working and a call to the front desk left me with «the tech guy is working on it, it usually only takes a few minutes». At midnight I gave up and at 8:30am he was apparently still «working on it». The hotel staff and guests clustered around the area outside of my room for their smoke breaks, kind of defeating the advertised claim that my room was «non-​smoking».
Adding in the fact that it was almost impossible to find (road construction was going on, the sign is only on one side of the building, at street level) and the absolutely obscene amount of money I paid ($ 144) for a room that was juuuuuuust big enough for the king size bed, it was an awful, awful experience that I hope never to have again.
I wish I could say more to convey just how truly awful this whole thing was.

One word. Pit. Smells, beds are way too small and toilets are those little tiny round ones that take 20 minutes to flush. Every time i walked by the main desk the receptionist was saying «sorry about that». They should just have a recording that says «sorry about that»… Wifi works slower than old dial-​up and water pressure in the shower is horrible. Don’t stay here unless your only other option is a park bench.

Nice
Staff but
Strange smell and
The feeling you’re
Someplace abandoned. Two miles to downtown.

This is the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at, outside of a third world country.
The lobby, apart from smelling of chlorine, gives a fairly good impression as it’s quite grand. At a second glance you realize the windows high up on the lobby walls look like they haven’t been washed in months. Then you realize that half the hotel’s rooms open right onto the lobby, complete with floor to ceiling windows. You can block out the lobby with curtains but it doesn’t do much for noise. The other rooms are the same, but the windows give you a stunning view of a hallway instead. As others have speculated, the hotel seems to be an outdoor hotel converted to an indoor one.
Maintenance issues and security were the biggest issues we had. A grating fell from the ceiling in our room during the night. The plastic phone jack box was lying on the floor, not mounted in any way to the wall. Once you leave the lobby behind, the second floor hallway leading to our room stank of mold. Many of the doors bear signs saying ‘fire door, keep closed’ yet one of these was propped open with a door stop. On the first floor one of the fire alarms was covered with a piece of cardboard and tape, crudely marked ‘out of service.’ The hotel failed to lock the doors after hours so only keycard-​carrying customers could get access. At the top of a stairwell on the second floor near the check-​in desk, an exit sign dangled from the ceiling by wires. There was no ice machine on the second floor, though there was an area with a vending machine where there was plainly supposed to be one. (Speaking of the vending machines, they priced their bottles of pop at $ 1.75 so I recommend bringing your own beverages.)
The breakfast wasn’t horrible; it was very standard for hotels. Bagels, mini muffins, English muffins, three kinds of cereal, Belgian waffle station, danishes, scrambled eggs, greasy sausage patties, bread for toast, milk, juice, and a token fruit (small bowl of apples.) The food area was quite cramped; if any more than three or four people were trying to get food at once, it was inconvenient, especially if anyone was toasting something or making waffles.
Check-​in wasn’t a problem. Parking was fine. Since we only stayed a single night we didn’t experience the problems with housekeeping others have reported.
We didn’t notice any bug problems in the room, and the linens seemed fine. The bed was comfortable enough and the AC worked okay. The water pressure left something to be desired, but whether that was an actual plumbing problem or water-​saving measures I couldn’t say.
The wifi worked fine for us, though it doesn’t handoff from one station to another automatically, and will force you to re-​authenticate periodically.
The prices this hotel charges are definitely not worth what you experience.

Okay…
I don’t like to give negative reviews out, but I have to say, the majority of what I read here somewhat mirrors my own experience.
The staff of this hotel/​convention center were very nice, and I have to say, we got a really nice continental (hot) breakfast in the morning before we checked out…
BUT…
This place was, at best, average. The rooms were okay but it really showed that this place had been refurbished multiple times and that it had seen better days. Not only that, but, and I’m not sure of this, I think this may have been an outdoor hotel that that was retrofitted as an indoor, as the architecture demonstrated.
There was a small pool, but it looked a little… well, I wouldn’t have used it. Also, as I said, this place was apparently retrofitted to make it into a convention center, so it seemed to me to be a mish-​mash of a hotel and and show place. I used one bathroom near the convention area where one of the stalls was out of service due to the ceiling caving in. Not good.
What got me most unnerved most was the price. Now, we went for one night, and, admittedly, this was during graduation for the University nearby and I know things were busy… but the room was over 200 dollars. And… it wasn’t worth that for just one day. I know rates go up for different events, but this seemed a bit excessive. It was a convenient location for us, and as we were on foot and had to go to an event up the road, it was ok, but I cannot recommend this place, except if you REALLY need it. It’s not horrible, just not great…

I doubt I will ever stay in a Clarion Hotel again. It is 2013 and I feel as if I am back in the late 70s disco era. Our room smells, feels dirty. All of the little things that require attention to detail are missing. Cigarette burns on the bedspread, cracked paint, television not working properly, etc Evidence of any kind of management is completely lacking. My wife booked this for a U of M football game and we are paying $ 150/​night. A complete rip off.

Bought a Groupon for here on an impulse, though I live 3 miles away. It was so unpleasant — dingy, smelling of chlorine, ancient, smelling of cigarettes — that after we checked in and had dinner out we went back home to sleep, then came back in the morning for the breakfast, which was edible but not worth returning for. The coffee was even worse than dishwater. Ann Arbor is the unusual (I hope) college town that has many fine places to eat, world class sports and entertainment, a reputation for cultural and intellectual excellence, is liberal, friendly, beer heaven, mellow, walkable — and yet doesn’t have a single high class hotel, though it has several that are pleasant, clean and comfortable enough in a Mobile Guide, Embassy Suites kind of way. Clarion, though, sets a standard for low class cheapness and seems to exist primarily to siphon off weary travelers from I-​94, about 100 yards away, and from the well-​known, crowded, hokey and reputable Weber’s Inn, another 100 yards away. This place belongs somewhere in a weed patch off Route 66. The owners/​managers should be forced to live there.

Clarion should ban this location as it is damaging to the health of their brand. I can’t even imagine it was nice in the 1970’s and no one has done anything with it since then. If you have any other options, stay there first. Front desk disheveled and disorganized, lay out very strange, maintenance has a long to do list.

Nope
Old, dirty, terrible customer service, and way overpriced for what you get.
When you can go across the street and get an experience significantly better for nearly the same price, I don’t know why you’d choose this place.

Welcome to Khasistan ! Wow, was this a bad hotel. I half expected to see Borat in the backyard with his donkey from the lovely view of the construction site we had in the back. My wife apologized profusely on the first night. Yes dear, I will check Unilocal from now on. The tip off was the open door at 11pm in back next to the security door. Supposedly you needed a room key to get through it, but the two left over cigarettes on top of the lock box indicated that was not the case… well ok… now let’s get to the décor of natural wood and deep burgundy against a dirty off white accented by flourescent lights. Early 1980’s ?? Maybe. Or the toilet that kept turning on, the faucet that was about to fall off… and the topper was the fact that our room did not have its own key ! We had to literally have the front desk open the room for us. The only bright spot was the staff who truly felt overwhelmed by any kind of owner management. Our russian waiter working the buffet breakfast earned the ultimate compliment as I told him ‘you seem to be the only one around here who knows what he is doing ” As we drove off, I couldn’t help but notice the new banner over the hotel «Under New Management» which called to mind that old Who song… «meet the new boss, same as the old boss’. You have been warned.

I know I reviewed this hotel before, but it seems the review disappeared. I used to consider this a decent hotel for the price, but no longer. I just spent the night there and hope to never return. I checked in after midnight, but still paid over $ 100 for a crappy room: internet was broken so I couldn’t finish up my work, AC was broken so the room was warm and stuffy, the shower kept turning cold and super hot, and the cleaning crew disturbed me twice in the morning despite my having the «do not disturb» sign on my door. It’s a bed a roof over your head, and it’s still probably one of the cheapest places around this overpriced, crappy village of Ann Arbor. But if you have the option, shell out the extra $ 10 for a night at the Fairfield or Sheraton or whatever.

I came out to Ann Arbor for a friend’s book release, and my wife and I stayed here since it was easy to find and relatively central to all of the activities we were going to. I will say upfront that my check in was not a nightmare. Despite having somehow miscommunicated with our booking service, they simply passed us through since we prepaid.
Things went down hill after that. Our room had all kinds of problems. We had a room with two «double» beds (more like big twins) in which we shared one. The beds were extra firm with only two pillows per bed. The water pressure seemed to be weak throughout the building leading to a weak shower and a toilet that wouldn’t flush unless you held the handle down for a good ten seconds. Finally, the wireless was spotty.
Those were not the deal breakers though. The deal breaker was the fact that after coming home from a party on Friday at 11 p.m. there was zero parking. I mean, the entire parking lot was full. We asked the front desk what to do and they told us to either «park somewhere out of the way» or just park in the fire lane. I continued to circle until we found a spot ten minutes later. If you know you have a parking problem (and if you ever fill every single spot on a single night, I’m sure you’re at least aware of the possibility), wouldn’t you think of a contingency plan of some sort instead of having us park somewhere else? I’d think so if your customers drop $ 130 a night.

Once again another hotel owned by non citizens who don’t give a rip about American standards of cleanlinessor living. It amazes me that they are allowed to continue to do business and represent Choice Hotels. I have made a complaint with the Choice Hotels chain as this should be closed and fumigated before allowing to accept money for a room.
We stayed on a slow weekend… no games in Ann Arbor so there were only 5 cars in the lot. The clerk put us in a room at the farthest room away from the pool, lobby, breakfast. On the way to our room there were bugs up and down the windows of the hall… there was mold on the base of the floors near the window… and a giant pile of dried up dog poop.
We got to our room and were greeted by another colony of bugs in the bathroom and near the microwave. So vile.
It was late and didn’t have the energy to search for another hotel (this was our 3d run in with a disgusting hotel like this in Ann Arbor) We were moved to a room near the pool that was cleaner although the mold in the bathroom was gross. We made the best of it. We went to the hot tub where it was heated to a scalding 135*, you could boil an egg in it.
Made it till morning and hit the ground running.
If you need to stay in the Ann Arbor area DON’T! 99% of the hotels are owned by folks that are not clean and don’t care about clean. You need to stay just outside the area in Ypsilanti, Brighton, Birmingham. Say NO to Ann Arbor

This hotel seemed okay in the lobby – but the longer you stayed, the more details you noticed.
A group of us (about 16) stayed at this hotel for a competition and the rooms were booked on opposite sides of the hotel. We had to share the double beds-​which, let’s be honest, are more like glorified twins. They were super stiff and only had 2 pillows. The door looked like it wouldn’t shut completely/​had been broken into. The wall of windows which led to the main hallway was just creepy – sorry, but I don’t want everyone else in this hotel to see me in my room (and it makes for very poor sound insulation). The bathroom door was like cheap plywood – the paint was clearly not meant for humid rooms because it was sagging. There was still trash in my trash can when I checked in, white liquidy residue on the side of the bedside table (I can only imagine what that was), and 2 of the 4 lamps were burnt out. The best part about the room was leaving it.
The rest of the hotel was wierd. The pool was in the middle with all the rooms surrounding it – and the walls of windows look right at it. So if you try to go to bed early, God forbid there are 4 little kids splashing away right outside your room.
My biggest problem with this hotel – they had flags hanging in the lobby of different colleges. They had everyone from the BigTen except Notre Dame and Ohio State. What is that? I call it discrimination.
To end on a positive note– the breakfast was pretty decent. It was mainly cold cereal and bagels, but they did have some awesome sausages and oatmeal.

I wouldn’t call this hotel A-​OK… mostly just OK.
We stayed here for a weekend when we came into AA for the Michigan vs. Michigan State game. This was pretty much the only hotel with rooms left by the time we booked, so we really didn’t have a choice.
Definitely too pricey for what it offers. $ 130 per night? I don’t think so. The hotel does have a pool, which is great for the families with kids and what have you, but that’s about all this place has going for it in terms of «cool amenities.» Our check in was kind of a nightmare, which seems to be a recurring problem for previous guests. I would say I was slightly more than annoyed, but there wasn’t anything we could do. Their entire computer system was down and they apparently don’t keep paper backups of their reservations, so prepare yourself. It may have been quicker if we had had a printout of our reservation confirmation, but we didn’t. We waited for about 30 minutes for their computers to finally come back up to check us in. Keep a paper backup of this stuff — what did you do before computers?
This definitely wasn’t the worst hotel, though. Our room was clean and we had enough towels. The king sized bed was comfortable and we had two pillows each — can’t complain. Free WiFi in the rooms and a desk to do some work if you’re so inclined. We also had a table with chairs, so definitely a step above a tiny room. The free continental breakfast was fine for what it was (starch, some fruit, coffee and juice… what more do you need?) and it lasts for four hours, so you can get breakfast at your leisure.
I’d probably stay here again if there wasn’t any other place to go (as is usually the case during football season). Not the best hotel I’ve ever stayed in, but definitely not the worst.

Wow. I always thought that this hotel was in the «budget, but ok» category. Even though I read some reviews that seemed to indicate the joint had gone farther downhill, I thought perhaps people were just being picky.
But it’s not picky to expect that a hotel could actually take and keep track of a reservation for a family member who is visiting from out of town.“Losing” a reservation (despite the family member even taking down the name of the employee who took the reservation) is never OK. It’s especially NOT OK when you have a room contract blocking out some rooms here, so there’s obviously the potential for the business to make some decent money.
As of tomorrow, when we can actually get someone who is helpful and can understand us on the phone, all rooms that our friends and family have booked here will be canceled, and we’ll be making whatever accommodations that we need to in order to spare our friends and family the hassle of having to deal with any of the unhelpful and confused staff here.

I have experienced less of the great outdoors while camping. Between the ants in the bathroom and the giant mosquito I found laying dead under my wet washcloth, I’d hate to imagine what I couldn’t see.
I was so skeeved out by the creepy-​crawlies, I hardly noticed the fact that the room smelled like an ashtray.