Hotel Review: Kimpton Palomar Hotel, Phoenix, Arizona
The Phoenix Sky Harbor airport is only a quick 7-10 minute drive from downtown, so when we had an early flight out of the PHX airport last month, it made perfect sense to try out a cool Kimpton Hotel in downtown. Enter, the Kimpton Palomar.
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Lobby
Lobby(s)
There are two lobby’s for the hotel, and the design makes figuring out which you are supposed to be in kind of complicated. If you come from the parking deck, navigate to the first level, head outside of the building, go into the 1stfloor lobby, and then once inside go to a SECOND set of elevators to get to the second floor. If you’re coming in from street level, the lobby is as you enter on your right.
Confused? We were too. Follow the signed and ask for help, it seems that everyone around is willing to help.
We were recognized as Spire Elite members and given the $10 Raid The Bar certificate (to be used at the minibar or hotel restaurant) and a bottle of water. Since Kimpton uses a secret phrase to get extra perks, we asked if our water in the room would be “chilled to perfection,†as that was the secret keyword, and were given a Happy New Years confetti bomb, two airplane bottle shots, and a disco ball glass. Classy!
The Room
As is per usual for Spire Elite members, an upgrade was given to a Junior Suite. In this hotel, junior suite seems to mean “bed with sofa.â€
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Sofa
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Junior Suite
I was super confused about this bed. It was at LEAST 2 feet longer than any normal bed I’ve slept in. At 6-3, usually my feet hang over the end of the bed. I had well over a foot to spare on this one, but the sheets that they used for the bed were regular sized, so when you crawled in, you were half exposed in the bed. The solution? I slid down the bed and left a pillow fort behind me, creating a barrier between the pillows and me.
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Huge Bed
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Huge Bed
The bathroom was AMAZING. The shower stall was huge and included a soaking tub. Yes, a tub inside of the shower stall. You could fit two people in the tub if you wanted to play Twister, but for one person it was certainly more than enough.
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Shower Tub?
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Shower Tub
The closet shared some interesting facts about Arizona AND a yoga mat, because, why not?
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Yoga Mat
Green Choice
This one shocked me a little. Most hotels offer points if you decide to forego the housekeeping service. Starwood hotels offered 500 SPG points a night, Marriott now offers 500 points a night at most properties. What does this IHG Kimpton property offer? A $10 bottle of water called Fred.
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Green Choice
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Fred Water
Seriously. A $10 bottle of water. Naaaaaah… I’m aiight. You can keep your fancy ass water.
Raid the Bar
There is an honor bar in the room, but there was nothing honorable about the prices.
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Honor Bar
Unbranded corkscrew? $10. Just use it and leave it there for the next person. M&Ms? $10. Yikes. Red Bull? That’ll set you back $8.
Since we didn’t really know what to buy, we left with a bag of funsize snickers (about 15 of them) for our $10. At 70 cents each bite, they mark the most expensive snickers we’ve ever had.
Breakfast
No free breakfast at IHG properties (another reason why they suck) so nothing to share about breakfast. Plus, we were headed straight for the airport so we didn’t want to waste our time chowing down in the hotel.
Local Area
The hotel is located smack in the center of downtown Phoenix which makes getting to enjoy the bars and nightclubs a breeze. Also, since it’s right on the Main Street, getting to the airport didn’t take longer than 8 minutes in the morning. LOVE IT!
There was a large ice rink in downtown as it was the winter time (I don’t know why my head can’t get around an Ice rink in Phoenix, but it does get cold at night…)
Kimpton Palomar Phoenix Downtown Ice Rink
The points redemption for the hotel was really high, as is the case for most Kimpton hotels. We scored what I can only say is an off-season rate of $97 a night. That seemed like a ridiculously low price for a downtown hotel in Phoenix.
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