Hotel AKA Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia Review: No Sleep Till Brooklyn

Philadelphia has a reputation for historical significance, cultural institutions, lively sports fandom, and delicious local cuisine.

Philadelphians, on the other hand, have a reputation for surliness, bluntness, foul language, and throwing batteries (it was really snowballs) at Santa Claus.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Philly, having grown up nearby and spending decades considering it “the big city.” Nowadays, it’s where I pop into for a couple of hours from my folks’ house nearby, not a place I’ve ever bothered getting a hotel room for. And, from experience, I know that Philly — especially around important Eagles home games — can be … trying.

But when I had to come to the city recently, and it wasn’t possible to stay with family, I decided it was finally time to book a Philadelphia hotel room. Even with a critical Eagles-Rams game scheduled.

Here’s what it was like to stay at the Hotel AKA Rittenhouse Square in a sea of midnight green.

Eagles: 28, Rams: 22, by the way.

Booking the Hotel AKA Rittenhouse Square

I had a potential Chase Ultimate Rewards bonus burning a hole in my wallet, offering me 10,000 points (worth $200 according to our valuation of 2 cents per point) if I booked a hotel stay of at least $400 through Chase Travel by January 31, 2025, and completed the trip by August 31, 2025. Staying at the Hotel AKA Rittenhouse Square in mid-January for about $460 ($489 after taxes and fees) checked off all those boxes nicely.

I booked a 1-bedroom suite with a den, paying with my Chase Sapphire Reserve^® to qualify for the bonus. I earned 10x points, or 4,880 Chase Ultimate Rewards points, plus the 10,000 from the promotion, for a whopping 14,880 points in total.

Chase Sapphire Reserve^®

U.P. Rating 

The rating for this card has been determined by our own industry experts who know the ins and outs of credit card products. Bonuses, rewards as well as rates and fees are all taken into account. Compensation from the issuer does not affect our rating. We only recommend products we either use ourselves or endorse.

A top player in the high-end premium travel credit card space that earns 3x points on travel and dining while offering top luxury perks.

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Chase Sapphire Reserve^®

A top player in the high-end premium travel credit card space that earns 3x points on travel and dining while offering top luxury perks.

Welcome Offer

Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.

60,000 points

UP's Offer Valuation*:

$1,200

Annual Fee

$550

APR

21.49% - 28.49% Variable

Credit Recommended

Upgraded Points credit ranges are a variation of FICO^®Score 8, one of many types of credit scores lenders may use when considering your credit cardapplication.

Excellent (740-850)

Why We Like This Card

If you’re looking for an all-around excellent travel rewards card, the Chase Sapphire Reserve^® is one of the best options out there.

The card combines elite travel benefits and perks like airport lounge access, with excellent point earning and redemption options.  Plus it offers top-notch travel insurance protections to keep you covered whether you’re at home or on the road.

Don’t forget the $300 annual travel credit which really helps to reduce the annual fee!

Pros & Cons

Pros

• 10x total points on hotels and car rentals when you purchase travel through Chase Travel^SM immediately after the first $300 is spent on travel purchases annually
• 10x points on Lyft purchases through March 31, 2025
• 10x points on Peloton equipment and accessory purchases over $250 through March 31, 2025

Cons

• $550 annual fee
• Does not offer any hotel elite status

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Card Highlights

• Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
• $300 Annual Travel Credit as reimbursement for travel purchases charged to your card each account anniversary year.
• Earn 5x total points on flights and 10x total points on hotels and car rentals when you purchase travel through Chase Travel℠ immediately after the first $300 is spent on travel purchases annually. Earn 3x points on other travel and dining & 1 point per $1 spent on all other purchases
• Get 50% more value when you redeem your points for travel through Chase Travel℠. For example, 60,000 points are worth $900 toward travel.
• 1:1 point transfer to leading airline and hotel loyalty programs
• Access to 1,300+ airport lounges worldwide after an easy, one-time enrollment in Priority Pass™ Select and up to $120 application fee credit every four years for Global Entry, NEXUS, or TSA PreCheck^®
• Count on Trip Cancellation/Interruption Insurance, Auto Rental Coverage, Lost Luggage Insurance and more.
• Member FDIC

Financial Snapshot

• APR: 21.49% - 28.49% Variable
• Foreign Transaction Fees: None

Rewards Center

Chase Ultimate Rewards

Factoring in the value of the points I earned, I could say I essentially got this suite for around $191.

Hotel AKA Rittenhouse Square Location

Hotel AKA is a family-owned brand that has locations in major U.S. cities and London and specializes in rooms geared toward long-term stays and residences. This particular Hotel AKA is in a former apartment building built in 1913 on the northeastern corner across from Rittenhouse Square, a park that William Penn (the founder and eponym of Pennsylvania) planned himself. It’s part of Philadelphia’s tiny and scarcely recognized French Quarter and in the fanciest and most expensive part of Center City.

There’s lots of shopping and dining nearby. The hotel’s main entrance (and our windows) directly faced a large Anthropologie store, and it was only a block or so to popular restaurants like the Continental Mid-town (get the French onion soup dumplings) and Parc. The vegan restaurant P.S. & Co. was a block and a half from the square, and the Di Bruno Bros. specialty food store was 2 blocks away. Possibly the world’s nastiest Wawa is about 5 blocks away, on Arch Street.

We drove here, but several SEPTA buses stop in Center City, including the 9, 12, 21, and 40, which stop at 18th Street and Walnut, right by the hotel. Suburban Station at Penn Center is about a 10-minute walk away, and the hotel and Rittenhouse Square are about a 20-minute ride from Philadelphia International Airport (PHL).

Hot Tip:

Flying in to see the “Iggles” play? Read our guide to how to get from PHL to Center City.

Checking In

I arrived with my wife and young son on a wet, gray afternoon ahead of an incoming snowstorm that didn’t seem to have dissuaded football fans in Center City. The lobby was busier than I’d expected throughout our stay, with some of it being traffic between the restaurant and its bar, which were separated and shared connecting doors with the lobby. (After hours, you needed a guest key card to summon the elevator to the guest floors.)

The doorman, an eternally grinning, upbeat man named London, was busy helping other guests when I slipped inside but greeted me heartily when he returned.

I’d asked for an early check-in the day before, and the woman who’d answered promised me the room would be ready when we arrived around noon or 1 p.m., but when I actually arrived at 2 p.m., the helpful man at the front desk said it hadn’t been prepared yet.

I left to find my family, who were getting apples and canelés at the farmers market on the square, but I missed them only to see them walking into the hotel. When I rejoined them inside, we found out that our suite was already ready — the front desk agent was about to call me. We were assigned Suite 303, a 1-bedroom suite with a kitchen, living room, and study (I’m not sure which they considered the den).

There was only a single, small elevator for the hotel.

Pretty soon into our stay, we ended up taking the stairs half of the time. The stairs from the second floor to the first floor led to a space just off the front desk.

The stairways to the upper floors were old-school, apartment-building-style stairs that could’ve been in any of countless New York City or Philly walk-ups I’ve trudged up and down.

We didn’t get any special amenities or benefits from the hotel, which isn’t associated with any loyalty programs, except a card entitling us to 1 free cocktail or glass of wine at the hotel restaurant (celebrated for its wine list and sommelier — so this was better welcome gift than it might have seemed at first).

There was no parking at the hotel, completely normal for anywhere in Center City, so we parked a block away in a garage right on Rittenhouse Square.

Suite

Our suite was on the southwest corner of the third floor. Despite the busy lobby during most of our stay (evidently for the game), the hallways were always devoid of people.

Though we were right next to another suite’s front door, we heard no noise from that side of our suite. Our other neighbors, on the other hand … but I’ll get to that.

The room opened onto a generous foyer, which led to the living room, the bedroom, and the kitchen behind it.

Overall, the suite was laid out like a square, with the kitchen sticking out back into the rest of the hotel like an antenna. Everything was in safe, lighter neutrals and whites, with medium-toned carpets and dark tiled floors for the foyer and kitchen.

The living room, where we entertained local friends for the afternoon, got a decent amount of light once we opened the shades and let in the winter sun. The leather chair and single sofa chair were comfortable enough, as were the small dining table and its 2 chairs. But the fabric-upholstered couch was seriously uncomfortable — it was as if the cushions weren’t even filled and we were sitting directly on the springs. It would’ve been more comfortable sitting on a wooden bench — I’m not exaggerating.

The couch in the study was just as unpleasant to sit on. The desk in the bay windows was fine, and our son did a remote class there the next morning on my laptop with no issues (besides rushing his answers and trying his teacher’s patience — but those had nothing to do with the desk or chair).

This was still the best room in the suite, though, as it occupied the southwest corner of the building, had the best natural light, and, at only 3 floors up, had commanding views of the neighborhood.

We also found out during the visit from our local friend and her young son that it was ideal for a game of Floor Is Lava.

The downside of being on the third floor with such a great view of the park, though, was that the street noise could get loud, especially in the evening in the study. In the bedroom, though, street noise wasn’t an issue at all. There was another kind of noise, though, which I’ll get into later.

The artwork was of that generically acceptable and “classy” style that is de rigueur in certain kinds of hotels and extended-stay places targeted toward businesspeople. It consisted of photographs of classical columns, pediments, and other architectural details conveying the concepts of majesty, seriousness, and money.

But pretty quickly, I caught on that there was recycling going on.

Even in the kitchen.

Bedroom

The bedroom wasn’t large, but we never felt cramped. Its windows looked out over Anthropologie’s wedding department across the street.

The king-size bed took up most of the space. It was flanked by nightstands with a truly awful alarm clock on one side and a telephone, notepad, and pen on the other.

The alarm clock had 2 USB-A ports and 2 3-pronged power outlets. You turn on the alarm by pressing down on the big on-off dial in the middle.

There were 2 closets, both on the side toward the foyer. One was a proper closet with bathrobes, hangers, a laundry bag, extra towels, and a room safe.

It was hard to hang winter coats here, though, because the middle shelf got in the way of anything waist-high or longer. The Wi-Fi router was in here, too.

The other closet had hangers and a vacuum cleaner.

The decor wasn’t exactly stylish or up-to-date, but I didn’t mind that. The room was definitely showing its age, though, with the occasional stain on couch arms, rusty vents, shower door handles that needed screwing in, misaligned bathrobe hooks, and peeling wallpaper, like here in the bedroom right outside the bathroom door.

The bed was comfortable and cozy, but I could barely get any sleep in this room. I managed maybe a couple of hours in total. It’s not exactly the fault of the hotel but the result of a series of instances of bad luck that wasn’t helped by the way things worked at the hotel and my own chronic issues as a light sleeper.

First of all, the flapper in the toilet tank (the suite’s only bathroom opened to the foot of the bed) was ill-fitting, so unless you flushed the toilet exactly right, the toilet would run until you opened the tank and reset the flapper. And when it was running, the toilet was loud — like Concorde-taking-off loud, even with the bathroom door closed. So, because my wife used the hotel gym late and for various other reasons, that was a thing to deal with until after midnight.

Then, around 2:30 a.m., our neighbors, who apparently shared or nearly shared a thin bedroom wall with us, got into a loud, extended argument about their relationship that lasted, well, seemingly forever.

Suffice it to say, it was loud enough to wake me up, unpleasant and awkward for me to hear, and long enough for me to decide the best course was to leave the bedroom and watch reruns of “Gravity Falls” (what a fun, weird show) on the TV in the living room while eating leftovers from the Continental (the pastrami fried rice is even better reheated) until it died down and our neighbors went to sleep. (The rest of my family, who are enviously sound sleepers, didn’t stir at all throughout the whole fracas.)

Also, suffice it to say, Jenna, that at the age of 31, you and your boyfriend should be mature enough to recognize when you’re simply incompatible and mutually part ways before the emotional damage you’re doing to each other becomes irreparable.

Hot Tip:

If your girlfriend tells you to go out and find another woman, then that’s a good sign that your relationship isn’t working and that you should actually do that instead of arguing loudly and keeping everyone else up past 3 a.m.

Anyway, I finally went back to bed around 4:30 a.m. and fell asleep probably half an hour later — only to be woken up at 6 a.m. on the dot because the accursed hotel alarm clock sitting a foot from my head was still set to the last guest’s wake-up time! I’ve never actually had this happen in a hotel room before, so I suppose it meant the cleaning staff had forgotten to reset it when they were getting it ready for our early check-in.

Bathroom

Reviews of the hotel often mention how small the bathrooms are, and they have a point.

If you sat on the toilet and someone opened the door, it would slam right into you.

The shower was a shower-tub combo with decent water pressure and temperature control.

The shampoo, conditioner, and body wash were wall-mounted, though we also found bar soap on the shower shelf.

Kitchen

The suite came with a full kitchen, about the size of a typical city apartment kitchen, with an electric range, oven, dishwasher, refrigerator, and freezer. The cabinets had been stocked with wine glasses and cups, plates, bowls, pots, pans, a toaster, and a plastic colander. There was silverware in the drawers and dishwashing soap, a sponge, and a dishwasher packet under the sink. On top of the counter was a Nespresso coffee maker with 6 coffee pods, including 2 decaffeinated.

Overall, there was enough kitchenware and tableware to use for your family for a few days or so, though not quite enough to throw a dinner party.

Food and Beverages

Hotel AKA had a single restaurant and bar. They were technically the same place, though they were separated by the lobby and had separate entrances on different streets.

a.kitchen + bar

I’ve found that, in cities with healthy restaurant scenes, hotel restaurants tend to be more miss than hit and that it’s better to venture out and find someplace popular with locals. That’s far from true of Hotel AKA’s in-house restaurant, a.kitchen + bar, from James Beard award winner Ellen Yin and similarly award-festooned executive chef Eli Collins.

It was packed, loud, and quite popular, and I was glad I’d made reservations the night before. Our Philadelphian friend told us that it was quite the hot spot for trendy locals.

Bordelaise is the king of sauces, as far as I’m concerned, so I had the sweetish pork sausage and just slightly bitter broccoli gai lan on polenta ($28), which was satisfying and well-balanced.

But my wife won dinner by ordering the smoked and braised beef paleron ($42) with cipollini onions, Hasselback potatoes, and black garlic steak sauce. The meat melted in my mouth, and I repeatedly stole more off her plate.

Our son ordered the cheeseburger and fries ($24) but without cheese, only to be gravely disappointed when it came with cheese anyway. The server suggested he get started on the fries and immediately went to the kitchen for a replacement plate without the cheese, which came quickly and with a personal apology from the chef.

Of course, our son, who is 6, took the buns from the first cheeseburger, combined them with the buns from the replacement burger and a smear of ketchup, and ate a ketchup sandwich worth $24 (or $48, depending on how you count it).

For dessert, we had a richly chocolatey dirty chai pot de creme ($10), which our son didn’t get to try because it contained caffeine and it was already past his bedtime.

My wife used the drink coupon on a nonalcoholic beer, which she quite liked, but it was a missed opportunity to check out the wine list, which has won various oenophile awards.

I checked out the bar on my own while the others went to the pool at the Hotel AKA University City near the University of Pennsylvania, about a 25-minute walk away with little kids. The bar was packed, and a bartender had to find a stool for me — apparently, it was just as popular with Philadelphians as the restaurant.

I sipped a bourbon cocktail for a few minutes, snapped a quick pic for this story, and then snuck out after paying the bill. It was a good cocktail, I swear! I just had other things to take care of and little time.

Amenities

Not atypical of a downtown city hotel, the Hotel AKA didn’t have many amenities. My family and friends, for example, ended up going to the sister hotel by the University of Pennsylvania to use the hotel pool there, which the front desk helped arrange.

Gym

The second-floor gym was small but had the basics, like stationary bikes, a treadmill, and light weights. It also overlooked the Anthropologie store.

Extra towels were on hand, and there was a water cooler but no bowls of fruit or anything. There wasn’t a locker room or bathroom inside the gym.

Cinema

Also on the second floor was a small theater with a large flat-screen TV and 6 plush cinema chairs. Guests could book the room with the front desk to stream movies.

Meeting Rooms

At this point, I started to realize that the second floor was where all the hotel amenities were. It also housed the 2 meeting rooms and a small sitting area with a nonworking fireplace.

The bigger meeting room had a long table and more seats.

The smaller room could take 4 people and was, I assumed, decorated by a fan of Piet Mondrian.

By the meeting rooms and cinema was a small bathroom.

Laundry Room

Finally, down the hallway from all of the above, a laundry room with machines lay wide open and appeared to be totally free for guests. I was tempted to wash something because, hey, free laundry! But I didn’t have any dirty clothes or detergent on me.

Wi-Fi

The Wi-Fi was fast and solid during the day and in the evening. Better yet, every suite in the hotel had its own Wi-Fi router, so we didn’t have to hope that every other person in the hotel was looking up how the Commander-Lions or Texans-Chiefs game went.

But around 4 a.m. (remember, I was up), the Wi-Fi router in our room totally lost its connection to the internet and didn’t get it back. We called in the morning, and the front desk staffer came up immediately to reset the router in our bedroom closet, but it still wasn’t working by the time we had to prepare for our son’s morning remote class. The front desk guy, however, had given us the password to the next suite over, which worked fine for the class.

Service

The staff at the hotel and restaurant were consistently great — friendly, proactively helpful, and pleasant.

The front desk clerk repeatedly helped us with our room issues, arranged a visit to the sister hotel’s pool, and advised us on where to go for kid-friendly pizza places.

The doorman, London, handed us umbrellas when it was raining out, engaged every child guest he saw, and was always in a good mood — I don’t think I ever saw him without a smile on his face.

And our servers at the restaurant were solicitous, spoke directly to our young son to assure him they’d fix his burger, and tipped us off about the extra caffeine in the dessert before we ordered.

Philadelphians have a (sometimes deserved) reputation for being unpleasant to be around. These are not those Philadelphians, and we’d gladly return to the Hotel AKA based on the service alone.

Final Thoughts

Though this was not the best night’s sleep I’ve had at a hotel, everything needed a refresh, various noises could be disruptive, and the bathroom was cramped, the Hotel AKA Rittenhouse Square‘s Center City location was impossible to beat, the food at a.kitchen was top-notch, the suite was spacious enough for 2 rambunctious boys to bounce around in, and the hotel and restaurant staff were a joy to be around.

My family has already decided to return to the property for our next overnight stay in Philly.