The Historic Davenport In Spokane, WA: Bottom Line Review (Marriott Autograph Collection)

My wife and I spent a month in Washington state recently, with the first 10 days of that time in Spokane.

We spent all 10 days at The Historic Davenport in downtown Spokane and this ended up being a superb choice. It’s a beautifully restored property with pretty good elite recognition which is in a central spot that makes all of downtown walkable. In fact, we enjoyed our stay there (and Spokane itself) so much that we’ve booked another night there in a few months time when driving back through Washington.

Side note: It feels like Washington residents keep its amazingness to themselves. I don’t think I’ve heard many people rave about the state before, but after staying in Spokane, Leavenworth, Seattle and Port Angeles, it’s shot straight up to being my third favorite state of our road trip so far (we’re currently at state 44 of 50).

The Historic Davenport Bottom Line Review

The Historic Davenport is named after Louis Davenport who founded the hotel in 1914. The property was the first hotel in the US to use housekeeping carts, feature air conditioning and more. Despite having many glory years, it closed in 1985 before being reopened under new ownership in 2002. Leading up to its reopening, it was extensively restored to its former grandeur. It’s now opulent without being garish.

On the building’s second floor is a museum of sorts featuring exhibits from bygone eras, including several fascinating black and white photos dating back to 100 years ago.

The hotel is now part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection. Note that if you do a search properties in Spokane on Marriott’s website, you’ll find four with ‘Davenport’ included in their names:

• The Historic Davenport
• Davenport Tower
• Davenport Lusso
• Davenport Grand

We’d originally booked five night at The Historic Davenport and then five night at Davenport Tower. Part of the reason was that award pricing for the second five night at the Davenport Tower was cheaper than The Historic Davenport, but I’d also been curious how the two properties would compare. When checking award pricing again a few months later, I noticed that the price of The Historic Davenport had dropped a bit, so we rebooked a 10 night stay there instead which had the added benefit of removing the hassle of moving properties halfway through our time in Spokane (we travel full-time with pretty much everything we own, so moving day is more of a palaver than it would be for your average person). It also meant that we only had to pay one pet fee rather than two.

Although I’m still a little curious about what the Davenport Tower would’ve been like, I’m not at all sad that we ended up spending all 10 days at The Historic Davenport. It was a lovely stay.

• Points Price: Seeing as this hotel is part of Marriott, they use dynamic award pricing. For our dates in mid-April, it ranged from 21,000 points up to 40,000 points per night. The Marriott Bonvoy program has a ‘Stay 5 nights, pay for 4’ feature on award stays which deducts the cost of the cheapest night(s) for every 5 nights you stay. With us staying 10 nights, that meant the two cheapest nights – 21,000 and 22,000 points – were deducted. As a result, the average nightly cost was 24,400 points.
  For our stay later this summer, the Saturday night we’re staying costs 37,000 points. We’ve redeemed a 35k free night certificate from one of my Marriott credit cards and topped it up with 2,000 points.
• Cash Price: Cash prices can vary by a wide amount depending on when you stay, whether you’re staying midweek or at the weekend and how long you’re staying for. When we originally booked, the average cost per night would’ve been $327.51 including tax. By the time we came to rebook our stay, the price had dropped a little, although I didn’t make a note of how much. If you’re planning a longer paid stay, it seems like the hotel sometimes gives a substantial discount on cash rates – potentially less than $175 per night.
  For our next stay this summer, the cash price for the Saturday night would’ve been $266.20.
• Points Value: This can vary widely too. On some dates you can easily get over 1cpp (cent per point) of value, but other times you’d be looking at 0.7cpp which is less than our Reasonable Redemption Value for Marriott. Our stay later this summer would only have gotten 0.72cpp if we’d booked outright with points and so that wouldn’t have been a great option. However, with a $266.20 room rate, I was happy to redeem a 35k free night certificate + 2,000 points as that room rate was still more than double the annual fee I’d paid for the credit card which earned the certificate.
• Resort or Destination Fee: Unfortunately this hotel does charge a $22.42 destination fee per night. As destination fees go, this one does have some way to get value out of it
  • • Daily $20 food and beverage credit
    • Daily two-hour bike rental
    • Daily shuttle between Davenport Hotels, local attractions, arenas, theaters, and more within a half-mile radius
    • Daily unlimited exercise classes at The Union West
    • One-time Washington wine tasting welcome beverage (ages 21+)
    • Daily enhanced high-speed internet access

  When checking in, we were advised that my Titanium status meant that the destination fee was waived which we appreciated as that saved us more than $200. Although we presumably could’ve taken advantage of many of the destination fee’s benefits despite the fee being waived, we didn’t get the daily $20 food and beverage credited to our folio. I don’t know whether or not those with Platinum status also have the destination fee waived, or if it’s only those with Titanium and Ambassador status.

• Parking: Parking costs $25 per day for self-parking or $35 per day for valet parking, both of which come with in/out privileges. If self-parking, the parking lot is opposite The Historic Davenport at the Davenport Tower hotel.
  For some reason though, we didn’t get charged a parking fee despite stating at check-in that we were self-parking (and being given a parking card to scan when entering and exiting). I’m not sure if this was an error on their part or if this was another fee that was waived by virtue of having Titanium status. Either way, it saved us $250 that we’d expected to pay.
• Davenport Suite: I’d booked a ‘1 king larger room’ as that was the best room bookable for a standard number of points. When checking the Marriott website the day before checking in, it looked like they were all out of suites for the length of our 10 day stay, so I figured we wouldn’t receive a suite upgrade. We were therefore pleasantly surprised when checking in that they’d upgraded us to a Davenport Suite on the top floor of the hotel.
  The Davenport Suites are junior suites rather than one bedroom suites, but it felt plenty spacious for it being a historic downtown hotel. There was a gas fireplace, king bed and wet bar, along with a desk to work at. The mini fridge was on the larger end of mini fridges (which we liked), plus there was a microwave.
  The king bed was quite high, so if you’re on the shorter end of things you might have a harder time getting in to bed. As a result, both sides of the bed have a wooden step stored beneath the bed you can pull out to step on.
  In the bathroom there was a jetted tub and a separate walk-in shower. The shower was spacious, but was only half-enclosed. I normally hate when hotels have open showers like that, but in this case it didn’t get chilly and the water stayed within the shower rather than splashing out on the floor.
• Housekeeping: Our suite had buttons we could press to either request or decline housekeeping. We declined it most days of our stay, but we did have them come in on a couple of days and they seemed to do a good job.
• Turndown service: None.
• Internet: The internet speed was good. We had no problem having Zoom meetings and streaming shows on our Fire TV Stick.
• Dining: This hotel has several food and beverage options:
  • Palm Court Grill – This is where breakfast, lunch and dinner is served.
  • Peacock Room Lounge – This is a bar that’s popular with both hotel guests and members of the public alike. Its name comes from the 5,000 piece stained glass design on the bar’s ceiling.
  • Starbucks – This is open from 5am, but seems to close late morning or early afternoon.
  • Roof Garden Terrace Bar – This is only open in the summer and so we missed out on it seeing as we visited in April. It apparently has great views of downtown Spokane, so it’s tempting to check it out when we return in a few months. However, it’ll only be a quick overnight stop, so there’s a much better chance that we’ll go for a drink at Whistle Punk Brewing instead – our favorite brewery we visited during our 10 days in Spokane.
  • In-Room Dining – Our room had an in-room dining menu, but it didn’t have any prices listed on it.
• Club Lounge: None
• Spa: Yes. We didn’t get any treatments though, so I’m not sure about pricing.
• Fitness Room: Yes. It wasn’t the most extensive of fitness rooms, but it didn’t ever seem busy and it had about 8 pieces of cardio equipment as well as weights.
• Pool: Normally, yes. During our stay it was closed for renovation, so guests could use the pool at Davenport Tower instead.
• Welcome Amenity: There was some soft peanut brittle left in our room as a small welcome gift. You can purchase more at the hotel’s store next to the front desk, or you can buy it at Bruttles Gourmet Candies opposite the hotel (Bruttles used to produce the soft peanut brittle for the hotel before they decided to make it in-house).
• Service: Things got off to an inauspicious start when the valet completely blanked us when we arrived – seemingly deliberately. That unfortunately seems to happen to us frequently at nicer hotels (the Thompson Nashville being the guiltiest party) when we rock up in our 2004 Toyota Corolla as we apparently don’t look the part.
  However, everyone else at the hotel was delightful, especially the two bellhops who helped when we checked in and out.
  We also appreciated that the hotel waives the destination fee for those with high enough status. That’s not something that’s required as part of the Marriott Bonvoy program (unlike Hyatt), so it was great that they went above and beyond in that respect.
• Pet Policy: The hotel is pet-friendly. You can have up to two dogs in your room and there’s a pet fee of only $50 per stay (rather than per night).
  There’s a grassy area opposite the hotel at Davenport Tower where your pup can do their business. The city is also very walkable, with lots of grassy and mulchy areas as you head down to Riverfront Park.
• Location: The hotel is in the center of the city, so everywhere downtown is walkable within 15 minutes.
• Elite Benefits: I have Titanium status with Marriott Bonvoy. Here’s what we received elite benefit-wise:
  • Free breakfast (sort of) – The Historic Davenport is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection which is one of the brands where you do get complimentary breakfast. We received coupons for each morning of our stay which entitled us to a complimentary continental breakfast. At this hotel, a continental breakfast consists of a pastry, fruit juice and coffee or tea – that’s it. That seemed pretty cheap, but it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. The continental breakfast is valued at $14 per person and if you’d like something different, they’ll deduct $14 per person from your check instead. There were several other $14 options and nearly everything was $20 or less, so you won’t be coming out of pocket much – if at all – each morning. The free breakfast coupon for those with status also includes server tips.
    We tried several of their breakfast options; my favorites were the bagel and lox, Davenport breakfast (eggs, meat, breakfast potatoes and toast), strawberry & banana cocoa muesli and the granola with honey & blueberry yogurt. My wife tried their biscuits and gravy and thought it was awful. The biscuits were weird and unlike any biscuits we’ve ever had (we used to live in Virginia, so we do know biscuits), although I did try the sausage gravy it came with and I though that was delicious.
  • Waived destination fee – this isn’t a standard Marriott benefit on award stays, but it’s a benefit this particular hotel offers
  • Room/suite upgrade – we did receive an upgrade to the Davenport Suite at check-in
  • Lounge access – not applicable as there wasn’t one
  • Late checkout – we could’ve stayed until 4pm, but we had a few places we wanted to stop at on our way to Leavenworth and so we checked out by 12pm which is the standard checkout time.
• Would I stay again? Yes – and we are! Like I mentioned earlier, I’m a little intrigued about staying at the Davenport Tower (as well as the other two Davenport properties), but we enjoyed The Historic Davenport so much, we’d rather stay there again.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Elite recognition – Proactively upgraded to a suite and had destination fee waived
• Decor – The property is beautiful
• Location – It’s in the center of downtown Spokane
• Breakfast – Although being limited to $14 per person for complimentary breakfast is a little stingy, everything I ordered for breakfast was delicious

Cons

• Points pricing – The hotel isn’t always great value for redeeming points at (although it can provide good value too)
• Destination fee – If you don’t have high enough status, being charged $22.42 extra per night will be frustrating even though it includes a $20 per day food and beverage credit
• Breakfast – I know, I put it on both the pros and cons list. While I loved everything I ordered for breakfast, it’s a shame that complimentary breakfast for elite members is limited to $14 per person.

Image Gallery

Davenport Suite

Breakfast

Peacock Room Lounge

Amenities

Hotel Decor & Museum Area

Spokane Stuff

It feels like Spokane flies under the radar as somewhere to visit, so here’s a few photos that were highlights during our stay.

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