Francis Marion Hotel in Charleston, SC

Beautiful hotel and accommodations, and easy walking access to many awesome Charleston activities! Staff was incredible, and the hotel is so comfortable. The Conferencing set-up is so professional!

Nice hotel, great location, bathroom small but to be expected with a historic building, hot water almost too hot, hard to turn it down enough to take a shower.

This hotel is the perfect blend of old and new. The yesteryear feel is wonderful.......down to the music in the lobbies. The rooms are wonderful in that they still retain the design when first built. Our room even had two bathrooms and showers! Access to everything downtown is VERY easy staying here. We were visiting my daughter at College of Charleston and this was perfect! We highly recommend!!

This hotel is outdated and falling apart. The lobby might be nice but the rooms need help. We checked out two days early and went to another hotel. The only upside is the location close to CofC which is why we were there. Bathroom handle fell off in my hand. I got stuck in the bathroom but my daughter was in the room and able to open the door from the outside. There was also mold in the toilet, the handle was leaking, and there was a mildew smell throughout the room. We would not recommend.

This trip was my first trip to Charleston, and I was told on many occasions to be sure to stay in the “historic” Francis Marion Hotel. The hotel is immediately adjacent to the King Street shopping district which is a plus. The on-site Swp Rat restaurant serves up generous portions of tasty southern style foods. I really enjoyed the poached pear salad and the shrimp and grits. The meeting rooms were adequate, and the hotel staff were professional and courteous, but that’s where my positive comments about the Francis Marion end. The guest accommodations are another story. From the moment I stepped onto the guest elevators, I was taken back. The guest elevators themselves are beat up, and in my opinion would be more appropriate for freight than for people. In the hallways, the carpeting was dirty, and again, all the woodwork throughout the hotel was beat up and poorly painted. It doesn’t help that the lighting was dim. Nothing about about this entry was inviting or made me feel at ease. The theme continued as I entered my room. One would expect in a historic hotel to see historic furnishings, but instead furnishings appeared to be cobbled together from the 70s and 80s. If this were a retro themed hotel like those in Palm Springs, that might be appropriate, except for the fact that these furnishings appear as if they have been here since the 70s and 80s. The bathroom was small, perhaps no more than 25 or 30 ft.²., And again the finishings, aside from being poorly installed, just didn’t fit. And in my room, the toilet didn’t flush properly, and the hot water was just lukewarm. The guest room itself was poorly lit, and one of the three table mounted lighting fixtures did not work. If that did work, the room may have been a bit brighter. All the lighting used bright daylight or fluorescent bulbs so there again was nothing warm or inviting about the room. That said, the air conditioning seemed to work very well, which was a plus in the 90+ degree weather. Perhaps my expectations for a historic hotel were too high, but I have stayed in other great historic hotels like the Empress in Victoria or the Davenport in Spokane, Washington, and while certain elements reflect their age, there is a charm about them and clearly attention paid to detail that makes it easy to overlook any flaws. Not so with the Francis Marion. I suggested to my friend that the Francis Marion is best described as the historic Davenport hotel meets a dated Motel Six. I don’t expect to be visiting the Francis Marion again.