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Business · December 202510/10
I'll preface my review with context. In August 2025, A co-worker and I visited this hotel while searching for a place for 30 co-workers to come together at our annual company retreat. We explored a n...I'll preface my review with context. In August 2025, A co-worker and I visited this hotel while searching for a place for 30 co-workers to come together at our annual company retreat. We explored a number of hotels, but Hotel Magdalena was the clear winner, based on our budget and needs, which included:
1. Location within walking distance of restaurants, coffee shops/trucks, shops, and attractions
2. Beautiful common grounds
3. Great catering options for breakfast and lunch buffets to be served to 30 guests
4. A fully equipped meeting room that for 30+ guests, including facilities for audio/visual and buffet food service
5. Friendly staff and a employees that our proud to work for their hotel.
6. Nice rooms with all expected amenities for a great hotel.
We were thrilled with choosing Hotel Magdalena for our company retreat, which was held in October 2025. The rooms were beautifully appointed and very well designed for the needs of our guests. The conference room was the best we've used in the ten years of our company's history I loved the staff, who worked with me every day to ensure the needs of our guests were always met.
There are some quirks of the hotel to mention:
The layout of rooms on the upper floors are somewhat frustratingly out of easy reach to other areas within the hotel grounds. Once our guests figured out some shortcuts, it worked out okay, but nobody was happy about the complexity of moving from one place to another, without being forced to use the extremely slow elevators.
Example: To access our conference room on the ground floor from my 2nd floor room, I had to use the closest flight of stairs to access the pool area, which must be unlocked using your room key. If you need to access the pool area early in the morning, your room key is disabled. The hack is to reach over the gate and unlock it manually. Why not walk around the pool instead? Because there is no direct path around the pool area to the main conference room grounds. You have to walk all the way around the perimeter of the hotel and return to the conference room area, which is annoying if repeated throughout the day.
If you are in the conference room and want to access the floor above, that requires a lengthy trek around the hotel perimeter as well, even though there is a direct stairwell between the two floors. The stairwell is reserved for staff only, though you can request access to it through the staff at the reservation desk.
Despite these quirks, I rate this hotel as excellent, given the beautiful grounds, top-notch service, fantastic catering service, an ideal location just off of S. Congress Ave, about a 25 minute brisk walk to the Capital building and an even shorter walk to the Congress Avenue so-called "Bat Bridge", and reasonable prices.Show More
