Gateway Lodge where reservations do not mean much.

This past week we learned a hard lesson about small North woods lodging providers. That is reservations are not their strong suit. Amy placed a reservation for two rooms at the Gateway Lodge along with the stipulation that we would arrive between 11pm and midnight. We arrived at 11:15pm to a note on the office door that indicated that the lodge was full and that there were no vacancies. The only person we found at the home on the premises reiterated what the post-it note on the door said, that is that there were no available rooms. This lad also let us that he did not know how to operate the computer to check to see if our reserved rooms were available. Based off the parking lot there was no way that this place had sold out of all of their rooms. We were then sent on our way at midnight without the rooms we reserved.

It gets better. The next morning as we are on our way to the trailhead from our hired driver who recommended this lodging, the proprietor called our driver to complain that we did not show up. Our driver set the record straight, but this just shows the lack of professionalism of the Gateway Lodge. Since that phone call Amy has not received any communication from the Gateway Lodge apologizing for not honoring the reservation that we booked. All in all their mistake cost us about an hour of much needed sleep, $70 more for a single room from another lodge, plus a bit of gas driving around trying to find another lodge that had vacancies. I would guess that this is a nice place to stay with friendly staff, but based off this experience we will not be staying their in the future and do not recommend others to rely on the Gateway Lodge either.

Gateway Lodge
1800 West U.S. Hwy. 61
PO Box 1138
Grand Marais, MN 55604-1138