- tl;dr:
1) Avoid any rooms directly above the Red Fox Saloon (their bar).
2) Otherwise, expect the noise to last till midnight (when the bar closes).
3) If you ask for compensation, expect no more than a nominal free breakfast.
- If you have one minute:
We lost half a day of our road trip here because:
1) Their bar right below us played loud music until we complained twice.
2) The staff provided misinformation about when the noise would stop and when we could speak with the manager.
3) The front desk manager, Branden French, was in the bar that night but did not speak with us until 10am the next day.
They allegedly refunded us 25% of the room's price, but we have not seen any confirmation or follow-up yet.
- If you have ten more minutes, here is why it will also happen to you:
Annoying guests with loud music from the bar until midnight seems to be a profitable thus well-established business model at this property. Here is my analysis:
1) According to the lodge's layout, there are up to three rooms affected by the bar's noise.
2) Each room's guests would get "complimentary" breakfast only if they complain.
3) Breakfast for each person is $10 (actual cost should be much lower). Assuming two-people rooms, the lodge loses $20 for each room with a noise complaint.
4) That is, dealing with noise complaints would cost the lodge $60 daily at the maximum.
5) The Red Fox Saloon (bar) runs from noon till midnight. If each guest pays $30, the lodge would only need two bar guests in this 12-hour period to break even.
6) There are likely more than two bar guests per night. The night we were there, the music ran from we checked in around 6:30pm till we complained around 11pm.
To complete this model, those noisy rooms may be advertised with lower rates to lure people in. Another review's management response mentioned that different "packages" have different refund policies, and that may help explain why it was hard to negotiate any meaningful refund.
In fact, the staff's response implied that the noise problem is well-known, if not intentional, and that the staff are experienced, if not trained, to fend off customer complaints:
1) When I mentioned the noise in the room, all front desk staff immediately said something like "oh, it's the bar" or "it's usually the bar".
2) The manager was in the bar when we complained but did not respond (although they claimed that the music volume was turned down).
3) When I asked to speak with the manager, all front desk staff tried to avoid putting us in contact. One told us that he was not in (although he was physically in the bar). The other refused to contact him and made us wait an hour.
4) There manager said, both to us and to Expedia, that they only offer free breakfast "for this type of complaints".
- If you have five more minutes, here is why you should avoid this hotel in general:
I find it hard to trust any company whose customers are not the first priority but just a mean to profit. I was somewhat amused by their employees' frankness about their carelessness for the customers, and it sometimes reminded me of the Grandma Millie conversation between the Enron traders (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOLNWF5QMxY). Here are a few examples:
1) When we went to the front desk to complain at 11pm. The lady said, "the bar closes at midnight." She might have been trying to comfort us by providing an upper bound of our annoyance, but another interpretation would be, "The bar is closing at midnight anyway, so why don't you just hang on for another hour?"
2) Branden the manager was sitting in the very bar listening to the very music and neglecting his customers' problems, and he very frankly told us, "I was in the bar, I just wasn't working."
3) The manager who Branden escalated this matter to cited "company policy" when he refused to either solve our problem or provide a way to escalate. I would usually expect this kind of responses from bureaucratic government agencies instead of businesses.
Thank you for reading this far. To summarize, this hotel has service quality problems which its staff willingly ignore. Therefore, unless you, my brave (and patient) fellow travelers, prove me wrong, I would not recommend Togwotee Mountain Lodge to anybody.
PS. Online reviews seem to be consistent with our experience:
1) The bar is loud till midnight
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=togwotee+mountain+lodge&lrd=0x53521f27c58a8f93:0x151c52a2d17ef775,1
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g60524-d308682-r36099561-Togwotee_Mountain_Lodge-Moran_Jackson_Hole_Wyoming.html
2) 10pm quiet time is nominal:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/togwotee-mountain-lodge-moran?hrid=MM1dUmG2G1Yp_Z2W4xOgaQ
3) Front desk performance:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/togwotee-mountain-lodge-moran?hrid=WY4P4rvZA0cqVFaET7EbsQ
4) Misrepresentation:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g60524-d308682-r116123651-Togwotee_Mountain_Lodge-Moran_Jackson_Hole_Wyoming.html read more