William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education Tours

This is my first review after staying here now 4x over the last 2 yrs. Overall I’m satisfied and continue to book here because it’s convenient to Duke and costs less than other options that are that close. Positives include the rooms are decent/clean, the cleaning staff is friendly and do a good job. Parking is free. My dislikes include the intense perfume smell in the lobby — à la a giant plug-in. For people like me who have issues with artificial fragrances, it’s very off-putting. Aesthetically, it’s odd for a hotel in the Millennium brand — kind of dingy and dirty-looking (its actually clean but looks like it might not be) with no real “look” to it; carpet styles differ from floor to floor with what is presumably the older style bleach? stained. The elevators range from a bit unkempt to gnarly. The staff woman who checked me in this time was not friendly or welcoming. She apparently could not find a reservation under my name. After I showed her my Expedia confirm #, she left to the back office, came back (said nothing) kept looking at her screen with a quizzical expression…then gave me my room key. The next day when I was making a midday pit stop to my room, my keys wouldn’t work. Thankfully a cleaning staff let me in. I later went to the front desk to tell them, and that staff person said it was because the reservation had only been enabled for 1 day. My confirmation clearly showed it was for 3 days, so why the original person only enabled it for 1 is just odd.

It’s a gorgeous hotel, but the management and amenities do not match the 4-star rating or the price tag. Most notably, the hotel failed to disclose that the indoor gym was closed for renovations until after I had already booked and paid. A working gym is a major factor in where I choose to stay, and dragging two treadmills, a bench, and some weights outside is an unacceptable substitute. ​The pool schedule was also completely inconsistent. After being told by staff that the pool stays open until sundown (around 8:00 PM), my girlfriend and I went down at 6:00 PM the next day to find it already locked up. Between that, rooms without microwaves or accessible HDMI ports for streaming devices, and an understaffed restaurant (Flask and Beaker had just one overworked server on duty both times we visited), the stay simply wasn't worth the cost. True rating is a 2.5 out of 5, rounded up to 3.