I stay at the best hotels all over the country for business and all of the best hotels internationally for pleasure. I chose l'Auberge because I thought its long reputation on Conde Nast Gold List would mean there would still be some quality there. WRONG.
We took a room in the Lodge, $250 which is reasonable for Sedona but very unreasonable when you consider the experience. The carpet in the room was frayed and filthy. Underneath the armchair and bed were wrappers, hairclips, and other miscellaneous trash, clearly vacuuming is not part of the housekeeping package.
We asked one staff member at the restaurant if they had a fitness center and if it was part of the spa, he just repeated "fitness center" with a dumbfounded look on his face. When I pressed and said, "you know a place where you can workout," he just shrugged nonchalantly and said "don't know." He was not foreign.
We went to the restaurant in mid-afternoon to make a reservation, the place was a disarray in the front with servers sitting all over the place counting up their money and ignoring customers such as ourselves walking in. I finally got a hold of the bartender/manager who said only 5:30PM and 8:30PM as only times available for restaurant reservations. We picked 8:30PM but we walked by the place at both 6:30PM and 7:30PM and it was EMPTY, not a soul inside or outside. Sorry, but a place does not have that many cancellations.
We asked if there was a swimming pool and the guy indicated that their "sister" property had a pool up the hill that we could use and that it was a "great workout" before going for a dive. So THERE is the fitness center I guess. We checked out the "sister" property - it was a trash dump.
They have a cocktail hour that runs one hour in the evening. We showed up right at the half way point to find a few measly crumbs of cheese and a couple crackers on a plate, the rest had been ransacked. I asked the attendant if they would resupply and he said the restaurant could not keep up. We had to wait another 20 minutes, and what they brought was some old stale tortilla chips. 10 minutes after that they brought a few cheeses out - YUM! Chips and goat cheese! What class and sophistication.
I called the General Manager on several occasions and he has not had the common courtesy to return phone call - if you cannot count on the head guy to take care of you, forget about it, this place is a DUMP!