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The Homestead Review
Read our Blue Ridge Pkwy. hotel reviews. Or post your own.
The Homestead 
- Address: Rte. 220, Hot Springs, VA, 24445 | Map It
- Phone: 540/839-1766; 800/838-1766
- Fax: 540/839-7670
- www.thehomestead.com
- Price range: $$-$$$
- Location: Hot Springs
Fodor's Review:
An evening at the Homestead is like taking a cruise ship through the mountains. Soothing orchestra music plays as guests stroll the column-adorned hallways, sauntering into the ornately decorated dining room for a luxurious six-course meal of regional and continental cuisine. Daytime activities include far more than shuffleboard: there's three championship-grade 18-hole golf courses, 4 mi of streams stocked with rainbow trout, 100 mi of riding trails, skeet and trap shooting, and nine ski slopes (the Homestead was the site of the South's first downhill skiing in 1959). Host to a prestigious clientele since 1766, the Homestead has evolved from a country spa to a 15,000-acre resort and conference facility. Rooms in the sprawling redbrick building, built in 1891, have Georgian-style furnishings; some have fireplaces.
- Hotel Details: 429 rooms, 77 suites
- In-room: Wi-Fi.
- In-hotel: 6 restaurants, golf courses, tennis courts, pools, spa, bicycles.
- Rate includes: 2 meals
- Credit Cards: AE, D, DC, MC, V
Member Reviews & Ratings:
Hotel in Decline
Posted by rameyag from Charleston, West Virginia on 9/4/07
We've stayed at The Homestead several times over the past five years and it is a hotel in clear decline. The service was terrible. We did not receive the room we reserved and after we were promised that it would be corrected, the front desk indicated that it wasn't even aware of the problem the next day. The room needed maintenance and the cleanliness was not consistent with a $550 per night room. The food was mediocre, at best, although the room service was prompt. The spa was, as always, first rate, but the rest of the hotel is showing its age.
We've noticed that, since the hotel began pushing an affiliated residential development, it has taken on a "club house" approach, with little attention to hotel guests.
There are many other superior alternatives in the region, including the Greenbrier Hotel in Lewisburg, West Virginia; Nemacolin Woodlands Resort in Farmington, Pennsylvania; and Keswick Hall in Charlottesville, Virginia, any of which will provide a better experience for comparable rates.
We had planned to stay two extra days and had dinner reservations to celebrate our wedding anniversary, but we were so displeased with the hotel that we checked out two days early. I noticed a number of other guests who were likewise complaining about the decline in this hotel, as well as its tendency to place unauthorized charges on one's bill. Indeed, although breakfast was part of our package, the hotel tried to charge us for breakfast on our last day and then deducted it from our bill marking it "guest not happy" as if it was our fault. Of course, any guest would be unhappy to get stuck with a charge for an item that was supposed to be free.
In any event, if you are thinking about staying at The Homestead, don't.
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