3-Star Hotels in Gardner

Initially we contacted the sales department for a welcome party at the restaurant for 15 people, a few of whom had hotel reservations for a couple nights stay (including us), as they were coming in from out of state. My wife and I explained that this was a separate party from a rehearsal and we wanted to just order appetizers for everyone and pay for a couple of rounds of drinks. As the group size grew to 23, we were then told (the week before) that we could no longer just order drinks and appetizers and would need to order a complete dinner off their special dinner menu. They claimed it wasn’t worth their kitchen’s effort to serve us just appetizers and drinks. We explained that we were expecting to pay around $600-$800, as our group likes to drink and eat and that several couples would probably stay for dinner after. It didn’t matter, the sales department just said we couldn’t have our party at the hotel restaurant unless everyone ordered dinner. We ended up having a party at the local Gardner Ale house which turned out really great! We spent over $900. Later, my wife and I returned to the hotel and went to the restaurant, just to see how busy it was. At about 8pm and they may have had just 50 people in the restaurant on a Saturday night. Seems to be a poor management decision as a couple of our guests ended up canceling their reservations after hearing about the last minute change from the hotel. In addition, we did stay at the hotel. Our room was physically dirty (needed a good vacuuming) and there was someone smoking in the room across the hall, (we could smell it in the hall and in our bathroom). This was the first night we were there. After mentioning this to staff they came down and agreed they could smell it, but just ended up spraying air freshener. They said they weren’t sure which room it was coming from. The smoking continued until the next day.