2/10 Rating
*EDIT: For what it's worth the Kasa team immediately reached out after my review and provided a partial refund for my stay.*
I did some research and knew this wasn't your average hotel but feel strongly after my stay that the guest experience description on their website is very misleading. This isn't explicitely explained anywhere so I will clarify- there are NO staff on site at this "hotel". No one to greet you at check in, no one to assist with bags, no one to recommend a coffee shop. The only person we ran into was someone who knocked on our door a few minutes after we arrived, claiming to be housekeeping. We explained we'd just checked in and he quickly left with no explanation. We never saw another staff member.
The photo description on the website states "no two Kasas are alike" but what they failed to mention is that you may get a Kasa unlike any of those photographed. The rooms shown in the Studio Queen photos are obviously small- but still much bigger than what we ended up getting. Our Studio Queen was the size of a small child's room and despite being of average size, neither of us were able to walk between the bed and the wall comfortably. The "queen/full" mattress we received (as stated on the tags), was definitely closer to a full and was roughly one foot away from the wall on three sides. An extremely narrow, ~five foot "hallway" leads to the bathroom (decent at 2/3 our room size) and the "kitchenette" is a microwave stacked on top of a mini fridge located within inches of our entry door. Online, a small desk area with a drop down table and chair are pictured- but our table was located under our nonfunctioning TV (??) and in front of our bed. The only chair, squeezed into a corner of the room elsewhere, could not fit at the table as the space between the bed and wall was, again, one foot. Kate Moss wouldn't be able to turn around in this room.
The "rooftop patio" is in fact not on the roof but on floor six and sandwiched between several taller buildings; the "nice view of the city" (their words) is a mostly obscured peak at the street below where it is trash day every day. You will feel at home because bags of trash are stored on the patio too.
You're probably wondering if I reached out to staff. Well, I tried to. But there are no real people on site and no real people at the customer service line either. An automated bot responsed to each of my inquiries with cookie cutter responses apologizing for the inconvenience and encouraging me to rate the conversation, never offering a solution. I *had* read a positive review about toiletries so we reached out about an extra set of towels for our three day stay. We were told by the bot that each guest receives only one bath and one face towel. The same bot provided loose instructions on how I could get my own coffee creamer (the ones in the room had been spoiled) from a double locked concierge closet in the lobby. Because it was the only thing I thought I might have any control over, I tried. I couldn't get in.
Pros: The bathroom was clean and of normal size. The nespresso machine was nice. The tiny mattress was pretty comfortable and a high quality noise machine is provided to help drown out the surprisingly minimal sounds from the street below. We found dozens of great restaurants and drinking holes within walking distance. I got my deposit back within an hour of checking out.
Cons: See above. At over $1000 for a three night stay, and with the addition of a nearly $300 deposit, this experience is extremely overpriced for what it is to say the least.