With more than 500 rooms in a pair of faux-Gothic towers that dominate the Providence skyline, the Westin was the first “luxury” hotel to be built in the city’s modern era. Unfortunately, it suffers more than it benefits from being connected to the Providence Place mall by a skybridge that provides the most direct route between old downtown and the new mall. The skybridge (which is accessed through the hotel) is used by everyone — including noisy groups of inner-city youths — to get to and from the mall from the rest of downtown.
An escalator that was added a few years ago helps to keep the mallrats out of the Westin's grand circular columned lobby, but let us say that it is not an ideal situation even so and probably contributes to what Retired Guy and I found to be a little bit of defensiveness on the part of the Westin's staff in the course of our unofficial downtown hotel survey.
The Westin was the only hotel where we were in any way discouraged from taking photographs. The bellhop who was assigned to show us a room said that not only was taking photos inside the hotel prohibited, we couldn’t even take a photo of the outside! When I reacted with incredulity to the last statement (after all, the hotel towers are part of the Providence skyline), he stood by it and said the appearance of the hotel, both inside and out, is the property of the Westin.
Whatever. . . .Of all the hotels downtown, the Westin’s rooms were the highest priced we found. We were shown one room for $169 and another, with a lovely view of the State House, for $189. Both rooms looked comfortable in a bland modern style, but comparable rooms in other downtown hotels were going for $159 the same night.
The Westin has a great location if what you want is easy access to both the mall and downtown, but its lobby is less inviting than others we saw, being more of a showcase for people arriving and departing than a place to relax.
Next: the Hotel Providence
