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Congress Plaza Hotel

3 stars
Chicago, IL
See location
7.2
Good
6,135 reviews
Thu 4/18
Mon 4/22
Room type
Provider
Nightly total
Standard room
$67
41 more Congress Plaza Hotel deals
41 more Congress Plaza Hotel deals

About Congress Plaza Hotel

  • Hotel Room
    You’ll have a private room with all the hotel’s amenities
  • Freebies
    This stay includes Wi-Fi for free

The iconic Congress Plaza Hotel in downtown Chicago has served solo travelers, families, couples, politicians, and celebrities for the last 125 years. Its gracious lodgings and close proximity to many local attractions make it an ideal destination for guests from around the globe.

Congress Plaza Hotel is located across from Grant Park, which overlooks Lake Michigan, and is about 30 minutes away from O’Hare International Airport. It's walking or driving distance from many major Chicago landmarks, including Shedd Aquarium, Navy Pier, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Magnificent Mile.

Accommodations at Congress Plaza Hotel are stately and spacious. Guests can choose from the Lakeview King Room overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan, the Family Suite with two bedrooms, two TVs, and one bathroom, or the Deluxe Suite with picturesque views and a jacuzzi. There are smoking and non-smoking rooms available, and all have complimentary WiFi access.

Congress Plaza Hotel offers many on-site amenities and activities. The 24-hour fitness center can set pulses racing, while the on-site barbershop, shoeshine, and same-day dry cleaning services can help prepare guests for an important meeting or a special night out. A full-service business center is ideal for sending or retrieving documents, and the charming gift shop offers one-stop shopping for special Chicago souvenirs. The hotel's Gold Room has been an in-demand spot for holding dream weddings for over a century.

Congress Plaza Hotel offers various dining options that are as elegant and inviting as the hotel itself. Sidle up to the bar at Congress Lounge and enjoy a craft cocktail or beer while watching the latest Cub’s game. Gazebo Restaurant serves crave-worthy breakfast fare to get your day started right, and Rafael’s Restaurant dishes out classic American fare for lunch and dinner while diners enjoy stunning park views.

Latest deals for Congress Plaza Hotel

Thu 4/18
Mon 4/22
King room
1 king bed
$113
bed type unknown
$117
bed type unknown
$117
Deluxe room
bed type unknown
$375
bed type unknown
$398
Queen room
bed type unknown
$90
1 queen bed
$92
1 queen bed
$97
Double room
2 double beds
$98
2 double beds
$102
bed type unknown
$126
Standard room
bed type unknown
$67
bed type unknown
$79
bed type unknown
$81

*Total includes estimated local taxes & fees payable on check out.

Prices are based on 1 night, not including taxes and fees

Amenities at Congress Plaza Hotel

  • Fitness center
  • Restaurant
  • Bar/Lounge
  • Room service
  • Free Wi-Fi
  • Coffee machine
  • Business center
  • Wi-Fi available in all areas
  • Flat-screen TV
  • TV

Basics

  • Free Wi-Fi
  • Wi-Fi available in all areas
  • Internet
  • Linens
  • Towels
  • Fire extinguisher
  • Free toiletries
  • Shampoo
  • Smoke alarms
  • Heating
  • Body soap
  • Air-conditioned
  • Trash cans
  • Conditioner

Accessibility and suitability

  • Entire unit wheelchair accessible
  • Increased accessibility
  • Elevator
  • Shower chair
  • Accessible by elevator
  • Hypoallergenic
  • Adapted bath
  • Allergy-free room
  • No smoking
  • Toilet with grab rails
  • Upper floors accessible by elevator
  • Designated smoking area
  • Private entrance

Services and conveniences

  • Conference rooms
  • ATM on-site
  • Business center
  • Wake-up service
  • Concierge service
  • Safety deposit box
  • Meeting/Banquet facilities
  • Mini-market on site
  • Room service
  • Key card access
  • Express check-out
  • 24hr front desk

Bathroom

  • Raised toilet
  • Shower
  • Shower cap
  • Bathtub
  • Hairdryer
  • Toilet
  • Toilet paper
  • Toothbrush
  • Private bathroom

Dining

  • Restaurant
  • Bar/Lounge
  • Breakfast in the room
  • Refrigerator
  • Food can be delivered to guest accommodation
  • Coffee machine
  • Vending machine (drinks)
  • Vending machine (snacks)
  • Dining table

General

  • Family rooms
  • Seating area
  • Interconnected room(s) available
  • Sofa
  • Lake view
  • Telephone
  • Carpeted
  • City view
  • Storage available

Media and entertainment

  • Radio
  • Flat-screen TV
  • Cable or satellite TV
  • TV

Laundry

  • Laundry facilities
  • Ironing service
  • Laundry service
  • Iron and ironing board

Things to do

  • Gift shop
  • Bicycle rental
  • Golf
  • Beauty salon

Bedroom

  • Socket near the bed
  • Alarm clock
  • Wardrobe or closet

Workspace

  • Fax/photocopying
  • Laptop safe
  • Desk

Parking and transportation

  • Parking
  • Airport shuttle

Health and safety

  • Daily housekeeping
  • Safe

Family friendly

  • Kid-friendly buffet

Fitness

  • Fitness center

Reviews of Congress Plaza Hotel

All reviews are collected from real users with a verified booking made with KAYAK or one of our trusted external partners.

Learn how KAYAK collects reviews.

7.2
GoodBased on 6,135 verified guest reviews
7.2Solo
7.0Families
7.4Couples
7.2Friends
Pros +
Cons -
Traveler type:
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A
8.0 Very good
We traveled for Lalapalooza. Location is perfect! Hotel is expensive for what it is and needs updating.
A
2.0 Poor
The room was so outdated, the bed hard, the tub handle rusty, the shower/tub area are dirty, hot water not working, no sound cancellation (ended up can’t sleep). Ac can’t be adjusted. Not worth for the price i paid Only good is location
I
8.0 Very good
The spacious double room was great. My only complaints would be the old furnace/AC which we couldn’t control the temperature of so the room would be too warm and some of the pillows being too stiff.
A
10.0 Wonderful
I loved the great view and access to Lollapalooza. I think what could’ve been better is an earlier check-in time since I had to wait over an hour to check due to others checking in at the same time.
M
1.9 Poor
This hotel has profoundly uncaring, incompetent staff and management and is dangerous. Elevators failed frequently. Seriously, no exaggeration. Elevators were out of service multiple times during my stay, and it was clear that that’s an accepted norm at this hotel. Lighting throughout is random and mostly absurdly inappropriate for a hotel, a mix of appropriately warm lighting and cool, body-clock-resetting cooler-than-daylight, with most floors’ corridors lit entirely with the latter (with zero cost savings compared appropriate lighting). This is fundamental incompetence. The breakfast area was absurdly cold, like 65 Fahrenheit, and windy with forced air, in summer when people were dressed in very light clothing. This would have only been tolerable for me with a coat; otherwise my fingers would have been too cold to handle eating utensils, so in effect there was no breakfast available. A package was delivered for me. When I went to ask for the package, it took approximately forty minutes, with me waiting there, to find and retrieve the package, and they charged me for the privilege of having my time wasted. Staff demonstrated zero regard for the most basic fire safety: A fire door for a stairwell was coming unhinged and could not be closed at all. Management lacks the sense to issue headsets for the internal two-way radios, and the staff carrying the radios use them, loudly and frequently, in the corridors, just outside the rooms, so that obnoxious radios of maintenance and security staff blare in the corridors at all hours and are more than loud enough to wake people in the rooms. So I couldn’t sleep because of noise, but the noise from from the hotel staff. Apparently the management of this hotel thinks waking people at all hours instead of using headsets is acceptable behavior. When I dialed the code for “Bell Captain/Laundry/Valet” from the many choices listed on the room phone, the answer was “Hello” with no indication I had reached the correct party. In the lobby, staff simultaneously had music playing and two televisions next to each other, on different channels, both with audio, so three simultaneous competing audio sources. This, obviously, is absurdly obnoxious. I used the laundry service. When I went to retrieve my laundry, staff who I had not previously met gave me my laundry without evidence of my identity. Every day that housekeeping encounters your do-not-disturb tag, the room phone’s message light will flash, requiring you to (1) dial the code to check for messages, then (2) separately, call the front desk (which likely requires waiting over thirty seconds for an answer), ask the front desk person for messages, and be told housekeeping encountered the do-not-disturb tag. Security knocked on my door loudly enough to get me out of the shower to answer and said they were checking on me because my do-not-disturb tag had been out too long. There was no escalation to this—I had interacted with front desk staff each day, and someone could have used the phone instead of banging on my door when, with my do-not-disturb tag posted, I might have been asleep, having sex, taking a shower, etc. The basic thing one is paying for in lodging is the undisturbed enjoyment of the room, and the staff at this horror-show of a “hotel” fails to comprehend even that. The hotel falsely claimed to offer “5pm late check out” for 69.27 USD. I explicitly booked, and paid for, this lie. I paid this so I could sleep. While I was sleeping, the staff ignored my explicitly-booked and explicitly-paid-for “5pm late check out” and literally attempted to enter my room, with me in it, naked and asleep, with the do-not-disturb tag posted, three hours and twenty-eight minutes early, at 13:32. What, precisely, did I pay for? All of the above was after I finally got a room. It was the fourth one. It wasn’t acceptable, but after the first three I gave up fighting to get what I was paying for. The series of rooms the tried to give me makes the above look like decent service. First room: • The room was intolerably cold, and the only climate control adjustment was fan speed, with only cold air available. • The corridor lit with blue, circadian-rhythm-disrupting lighting. Minimal exposure to such lighting at night causes major sleep disruption, entirely defeating the purpose of a hotel. Second room: • When I complained about the intolerably-cold room, staff have me a key to another room. The key worked, and when I tried to open the door it was stopped by the chain lock. In other words, THEY GAVE ME A KEY TO AN OCCUPIED ROOM. Third room: • The refrigerator, which was a specific line item I paid for, was not working at all. I found a cord that was unplugged, which could have been for the refrigerator, but I could not find an outlet that that cord could reach. • Again, the room was intolerably cold, with the only climate control adjustment being for fan speed, and only cold air was available. • More utter disregard for basic fire safety: A fire sprinkler was partially covered, preventing proper function. Fourth room: • One of two lamps had blue, circadian-rhythm-disrupting light. Resetting a body clock to be awake all night is the opposite of the most fundamental purpose of a hotel. I had to go out in the middle of the night to buy appropriate light bulbs. • The in-room safe was locked. • The sink drain cap was missing, so the sink could not be filled, dropped objects would be lost, and the appearance is clearly wrong. I had planned and expected to wash things in the sink, because it’s a sink. • One of two lamps was a three-way lamp with an incorrect one-way bulb so the lamp appeared not to work, then only with the second turn of the switch the lamp goes on or off. • All of the pillows were extremely tall, usable only for side-sleeping positions, and even then only by people with quite wide shoulders. Anyone who sleeps in other positions or does not have wide shoulders simply could not sleep well—another thing completely counter to the simple fundamental purpose of a hotel. • The room was cold, with the only climate control adjustment being fan speed, and only cold air available. I requested a space heater, and the one delivered had an obviously unsafe damaged (partly melted) plug—again, staff clearly disregarded even the most basic fire safety. Also the heater had no thermostat—just two continuous-output power levels—so obviously couldn’t keep a room comfortable for a sleeping person. • The exhaust fan in the bath, which turned on and off only with the only light, squealed loudly when turned on, well more loudly than needed to wake most people, for a few seconds to several minutes, and occasionally thereafter. The problem and the fix are obvious and simple, so it’s clear the staff at this hotel simply don’t care.
M
4.2 Mediocre
Pros:location
Cons:the customer service could be improved. My Expedia reservation took a while, I sat in the lobby for a while (this was okay), but afterwards they charged double, and I had to call 3 times, and involved Expedia team to have the issue solved and get the reimbursement.
P
8.5 Very good
Pros:The bed was great as were the amenities. The hotel is lovely and spacious. When I commented in a different review that I was surprised not to have been offered an upgrade in a very slow time, I was immediately given one. Our 3 night stay was very pleasant.
Cons:Many of the staff seemed indifferent to us as customers. Only after my poor review did the front desk take any interest in us and even then there were no smiles. The maintenance man we met on the elevator seemed to be the only person happy to work there.
A
7.4 Good
Pros:Location was great and the room was nice
Cons:No parking. The price was good but the parking was not included, it and was about $50 a night so it kind of defeated the purpose of getting a good deal.
S
9.4 Wonderful
Pros:What a grand old lady this hotel is. Soak up the ambience and the history and enjoy the great location.
Cons:Make no doubt this place old, but beautiful. The pipes creak, the elevators break down occasionally but definitely great value for money considering her location.
M
8.8 Very good
Pros:I loved the location and history of this hotel. It wasn’t fancy but it was clean and the bed was very comfortable.
Cons:I really wish they had water available in the lobby. They had containers out there but they never had water in them at all for the three days we were there.

Location

520 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605

What's nearby

  • Grant Park227 yd
  • Symphony Center0.3 mi
  • Art Institute of Chicago0.3 mi
  • Cloud Gate0.5 mi
  • Millennium Park0.5 mi
  • Chicago Cultural Center0.6 mi
  • Willis Tower0.6 mi
  • Field Museum0.7 mi
  • Chicago Theater0.7 mi
  • Shedd Aquarium0.7 mi
  • Chicago Lakefront Trail0.9 mi
  • Chicago Riverwalk0.9 mi

Policies

Check-in/Check-out

Check in anytime after 3:00 PM, check out anytime before 12:00 PM

Cancellation/prepayment

Cancellation/prepayment policies vary by room type and provider.

Essential information about Congress Plaza Hotel

Low season

February

High season

August

Average price (weeknight)

$242

Average price (weekend night)

$184
Cheapest month to stay with an average 62% drop in price.
Most expensive month to stay with an average 36% rise in price.
Average Sun - Thu price over the last 2 weeks.
Average Fri & Sat price over the last 2 weeks.

When to book a room at Congress Plaza Hotel

Price per night. Prices are not fixed and may vary with time.
Average nightly price per month
Average nightly price

Top tips for your stay at Congress Plaza Hotel

  • If you’re after a cheap room at Congress Plaza Hotel, then you should consider staying during the low season. The cheapest deals can generally be found in February and January.
  • Prices can also vary depending on which day of the week you stay. For the best room deals at Congress Plaza Hotel, plan to stay on a Saturday or Monday. The most expensive day is usually Wednesday.
  • The cheapest price a room at Congress Plaza Hotel was booked for on KAYAK in the last 2 weeks was $102, while the most expensive was $165.
  • How long should you stay at Congress Plaza Hotel? KAYAK users usually book their rooms here for 2 days.

FAQs when booking at Congress Plaza Hotel

  • How are the beds at Congress Plaza Hotel?

    The beds at Congress Plaza Hotel are comfortable and guarantee a good night’s rest, according to many guests.

  • Is parking available at Congress Plaza Hotel?

    Yes, parking is available at Congress Plaza Hotel. However, some guests mentioned that the parking fee is $62 every time you leave and come back.

  • What can I expect from the dining options at Congress Plaza Hotel?

    Congress Plaza Hotel offers various dining options that are as elegant and inviting as the hotel itself. Guests can enjoy classic American fare for lunch and dinner at Rafael’s Restaurant, and crave-worthy breakfast fare at Gazebo Restaurant to start the day right.

  • How is the cleanliness at Congress Plaza Hotel?

    For the most part, the rooms at Congress Plaza Hotel are clean and super spacious, ensuring a comfortable stay for guests.

  • When is the best time to visit Congress Plaza Hotel?

    The best time to visit Congress Plaza Hotel is during the low season in January or the high season in August. However, it's important to note that some guests have experienced issues with the air conditioning and heating during their stay.

  • What deals or special offers can guests receive at the Congress Plaza Hotel?

    If you are hoping to eat some of your meals at the Congress Plaza Hotel during your trip, consider booking the Bed and Breakfast package, which will provide you with free daily breakfast for every member of your party. Depending on how many nights you will be staying at the hotel, you may also be eligible to receive a discount on your booking.

  • What wedding packages are offered by the Congress Plaza Hotel?

    When couples are planning their special day at the Congress Plaza Hotel, there are several reception packages that they can choose from. The basic package provides a selection of amenities, including a personal wedding planner, a sparkling wine toast, decorations, a 4h open bar, and a custom designed wedding cake. Different catering packages can be selected, with the A Moment in Time package costing $129 per guest and providing entree choices such as beef wellington, pot stickers, and crab cakes. For a fancier menu, opt for the An Elegant Affair package, which costs $159 per guest and includes the option of filet mignon and lobster tails.

  • What meeting amenities are offered by the Congress Plaza Hotel?

    For those that are planning on hosting a meeting or workshop at the Congress Plaza Hotel, there are many services that you can take advantage of. For an additional fee, guests can receive access to audio equipment, technical personnel to help with logistical set-ups, lighting, and special effects. It is also possible to purchase access to flip charts, easels, markers, and an AV cart, as well as computer data equipment and video equipment. There is an on-site catering team that will work with you to customize your perfect menu for the event.

  • What popular sites and attractions are located near the Congress Plaza Hotel?

    If you are interested in science, consider visiting the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, a unique experience that is only a 5m drive from the Congress Plaza Hotel. For those that enjoy art, the Museum of Contemporary Art can be reached by car in under 7m and is known for being one of the world’s largest contemporary art venues. The Field Museum is a 6m drive from the hotel and focuses on natural history, making it a popular choice among children.

  • What choices do guests have when traveling from Chicago O’Hare International Airport to the Congress Plaza Hotel?

    If you will be traveling with a lot of luggage or just simply want to go from Chicago O’Hare International Airport to the Congress Plaza Hotel as quickly as possible, it is best to either rent a car or use a ridesharing service. A standard UberX will cost you approximately $31 to $39 each way, while an UberXL will be closer to $50 to $65. If you would like to save money, opt to use public transportation instead, such as the local train. The Blue line will bring you to the hotel in around 50m, and a single-fare ticket will cost $2.50.(Prices checked 06/06/19).

  • Where is Congress Plaza Hotel located?

    Congress Plaza Hotel is located at 520 South Michigan Avenue in Loop, 0.2 miles from the center of Chicago. Grant Park is the closest landmark to Congress Plaza Hotel.

  • When is check-in time and check-out time at Congress Plaza Hotel?

    Check-in time is 3:00 PM and check-out time is 12:00 PM at Congress Plaza Hotel.

  • Does Congress Plaza Hotel offer free Wi-Fi?

    Yes, Congress Plaza Hotel offers free Wi-Fi.

  • How far is Congress Plaza Hotel from the airport?

    Congress Plaza Hotel is 8.7 miles from Chicago Midway.

  • How does KAYAK find such great Congress Plaza Hotel hotel deals?

    KAYAK scours the web for all room deals available at Congress Plaza Hotel in Chicago and lets you compare them to find the best rate for your stay. Many different travel sites will offer discounts or deals at different times for rooms at Congress Plaza Hotel and KAYAK will provide you with prices from a huge range of travel sites. That means that you can always find a great deal for Congress Plaza Hotel.

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Good to know

Value for money

7.1

Distance to city center

0.2 mi

Nearest Airport

Chicago Midway

Distance to airport

8.7 mi