Hotel: The Langham, Chicago

Room: One Bedroom Club Level Suite, river view

Rate: ~$1,300/night

Length: 3 nights

Booking: Direct

TLDR: The views are awesome. The bed is great. The club lounge is the only part of this hotel where I got real five-star service. Everything else feels like a property that opened in 2011 and never got the memo that it's 2026. For $1,300 a night, the attention to detail isn't there.

Some context on what I'm looking for

A great city hotel, to me, is a hotel in an amazing location with exceptional service from the concierge to the bellman to the housekeeping team, and it makes you feel at home when you're in the city. The Connaught in London. The Greenwich Hotel in NYC. Those are great city hotels.

Chicago is one of the best cities in America and it doesn't have one. The Four Seasons gets recommended. The Langham gets recommended. Reddit has mixed reviews on everything else. I was hoping the Langham would be the one. It wasn't.

Arrival

• Drop-off was smooth. Doorman opened the door, said hi, pointed me to the second floor for check-in. Without him I would have been lost. Good start.
• Check-in agent never used my name. Most luxury hotels train staff to say your name 2-3 times during check-in. Zero here.
• Room was ready at 3:30pm which is fine

The Club Lounge (the highlight)

• This is where the hotel earns its stars. The lounge staff were warm, smiling, great morning energy. The only place I experienced real service the whole stay.
• Breakfast was a solid spread. Not spectacular, but solid.
• Full candy bars stocked in the lounge. I'm a sucker for free high-quality snacks, so really good touch.
• If you stay here, club level is the move. Outside the lounge, service falls off a cliff.

Concierge

• Texted to book a shave appointment. They responded quickly with recommendations.
• Then they texted me a credit card authorization form in PDF format to fill out in order to book it.
• A great hotel concierge books the appointment and trusts the room. If I cancel, charge me. The fact that I have to fill out a form to get a 30-minute shave booked is a tell. A great city hotel does not make you fill out PDFs. They help you on the go.

Room (good stuff)

• River view is spectacular. Worth a pause at the window every morning.
• Bed, pillows, sheets all great. Zero complaints.
• Bathroom amenities were generous. Dental kit, hairbrush, the things some hotels make you call down for.
• Separate bidet, which is actually one up on both the Connaught and the Greenwich (we're all spoiled with electric bidets, but I'll take a separate one over none).
• Shower is big, good water pressure, nice products. Loud when you turn both heads on, sounds like someone gurgling water at you, but not a real complaint.

Room (the dated stuff, and this is the hotel-wide problem)

• Drapes open with a loud mechanical hum. The kind you stopped hearing in nice hotels around 2014.
• Curtains randomly opened and closed at night. Walked into the living room and they just opened on their own. I think the motion sensor is broken.
• A couple of lamps didn't work.
• Closet light was my biggest pet peeve. Three switches, only one of them did anything, and even with that one on you couldn't see what was in the closet.
• No USB-C in any of the built-ins. They had a little USB-C add-on accessory at the bedside, which was a nice touch, but you can feel that the room was wired in 2011.
• Bathroom scale was missing.
• WiFi was slow.

For $1,300 a night, somebody on the housekeeping or maintenance side should be testing the lamps and the drapes and the switches between guests. The fact that nobody is, is the real review.

Service (outside the lounge)

• Front desk: cold. No warmth, no smiles, no name.
• Housekeeping knocked for turndown service, asked if I wanted water, I said no, they said "bye" and left. I didn't even know that was turndown until I thought about it later.
• The actual housekeeping work was good. They rolled the cords. They folded clothes I'd left on the bed. The quality was there, the human warmth wasn't.

The room service thing

• Dinner came fast and the food was fine.
• Asked them to come pick up the cart at 9:15pm.
• 10pm rolls around, cart still in the room. I put the privacy sign on and got ready for bed.
• 10:15pm, phone rings. It's room service asking if it's still a good time to come grab the cart. You don't call a guest's room at 10:15pm when the privacy sign is up. (I don't know, maybe I'm being picky on that one. Curious what people here think).

Bottom line

• Room: 6/10. Beautiful view, comfortable bed, dated everything else.
• Service: 5/10. Lounge staff carries the whole score. The rest is uninterested at best.
• Detail: 4/10. Broken stuff in a $1,300 room is the cleanest signal that nobody's checking.
• Value: not great.

Chicago still doesn't have a great city hotel. The Langham isn't it.

What is everyone here picking when they're in town? Would love to be wrong about there not being one.