The Four Seasons Minneapolis opened in May 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic. Located near the downtown library on Hennepin Ave., the hotel’s 222 guest rooms, including thirty-one suites, occupy the first ten floors of a thirty-four-story mixed-use tower. The grandly named RBC Gateway also includes residences (by Four Seasons) and offices, presumably including RBC’s.

The property has been on my radar for keeping its room rates above $500 a night year-round in a city where the next-highest-rate might have a 3 or even a 2 leading it off. Four Seasons Minneapolis instead turns to buy-X-nights-get-one-free discounts familiar to the brand’s customers. These discounts drive down average-night rates to a tolerable level still above any competing Minneapolis property. Happily, such rates stack with Four Seasons Preferred Partner benefits.

Reservations

Using Live Luxe Travel, I booked a top-level “room” (that is, the most expensive room directly below a suite) on a third-night-free Preferred Partner rate, which brought the nightly average rate to around $390, including all taxes and fees. The Preferred Partner booking came with the following benefits:

$100 hotel credit
Daily breakfast for two served in hotel restaurant or through in-room dining
One category room upgrade, where available

I was hoping the one-category upgrade would land me in a multiroom suite, but was doubly foiled by the property.

Checking in

Despite having multiple hotel employees at the Four Seasons’ entrance, on entering the building, a greeting staff member may open the first door, but not the second. Alternately, no doors are opened. Not including automatic doors was a choice, but greetings are perfunctory, at best; it’s a level of service familiar to anyone who’s been to a big-city Marriott, Hilton, or Grand Hyatt.

One associate staffed the check-in desk at 14:00, the break between peak checkout and checkin. He was helping another guest as I approached the desk. I waited under five minutes.

The check-in was polite and efficient, it is repeated a thousand times a day at limited- and full-service hotels across the country. I didn’t have bags and wasn’t offered assistance. I walked past the lobby’s beautiful fresh-cut flower centerpiece to the wrong set of elevators; I corrected myself, and found my assigned room at the end of the hall.

For unimportant reasons, I was sent to the wrong room, one in the category I booked (that is, without the upgrade) and with two double beds. If the Preferred Partner benefits were explained at check-in rather than relegated to the letter in the envelope, I would have inquired about not receiving the upgrade, particularly when the hotel had so many suites available. I returned to the front desk, where the apologetic associate issued a key to the lowest-level suite, an executive.

Room and property

I’m not sure when we agreed executive as an adjective means inferior (think executive MBA), but I hate the truncated suite version, which is not a suite. As someone explained to Lucky over at One Mile at a Time, a suite of music is multiple pieces; a hotel suite should be multiple rooms.

Executive suite, however, generally means a larger room; here, according to Four Seasons’ website, a Skyline Executive Suite provides 619 sq. ft. with one king bed vs. a Premier River-view Room’s two double beds in 615 sq. ft. Owing to the check-in snafu, I saw both; the Executive Suite uses the space where a second bed would be for an L-shaped sectional sofa.

So, the room. On entering, there’s a table to the left in a small entry, and then a bar to the left in the room-proper, with said sofa straight ahead, and the king-sized bed to the right.

The room’s controls felt like a luxury hotel, with dedicated buttons for lighting presets and to open and close the window treatments. The bed was comfortable with a plush comforter.

The bathroom included double sinks to the left, a tub straight ahead, and a shower and toilet with door, to the right. The bathroom’s location meant river views, arguably the best in the room, all from floor-to-ceiling windows, which could be obscured by a privacy shade or blackout curtains.

Food and beverage

With the room mix-up, the welcome gift wasn’t delivered until after I’d left the room for the day. It consisted of a hand-written card, a bottle of champagne/sparkling wine, and a chocolate sculpture.

I ate at the property five times. Once at the bar, I had appetizers and drinks; once at the restaurant breakfast; breakfast twice through room service; and one light lunch near the outdoor pool. The bar food included calamari, reportedly on the tough side. All the breakfasts, which included a mushroom omelet and shakshuka, were exactly what one would expect of a luxury hotel and both looked and tasted fine. Transparently, the Four Seasons breakfast faced a sentimental favorite, the Keys Café in the Foshay Tower. I’d take Keys over Four Seasons any day.

A light lunch of fried walleye sandwiches followed by a macaroon-with-ice-cream dessert was breezy, pleasing ephemera.

Minneapolis is my hometown, and my family handles the restaurant reservations when I’m in town. Which is to say, it’s unlikely I’d spend on a dinner here, both in opportunity cost and price (mains in the $32–$68 price range).

Service

Most service could be requested via an in-room tablet. Once I discovered this, I used it for nearly all interaction with the hotel: to request the room be made up, to order breakfast, and to request the room-service tray be cleared. Most helpfully, the tablet confirmed when a request had been received.

Should a tablet be the most convenient interface at a five-star hotel? I’d argue no, and also that Four Seasons Minneapolis isn’t a five-star hotel. Certain elements of luxury hotels are missing—the anticipation of need, polish in service such as a welcome back to the property by name or the literal opening of doors. At breakfast in the restaurant, my sister sent me a text to let me know she could make it after all; my request to hold my order received a “let me check” instead of the preferred “not a problem.”

The expectations when selling hotel rooms at this price, and significantly higher than competition, are high; paired with a generally reliable brand like Four Seasons, it seemed reasonable to expect near perfection. Instead the soft product was comparable to the JW Marriott in the Mall of America or the W downtown; solid for a full-service property, but far from luxury.

** stars (out of five)

Almost certainly, spending the delta in room rates between Four Seasons and Minneaplis’s other high-end hotels’ on room upgrades and food and beverage is a better choice for nearly all travelers than the Four Seasons Minneapolis. The product, hard product and soft, is fine; it’s just not luxury.

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