Just got back from a lovely few days in Charleston. I'm not great at TR's but one really important PSA for anyone planning a visit:
The Hyatt Place/Hyatt House near the shul is NOT Shabbos-friendly. Based on the 2 TR's posted here that both stayed there, we also made a reservation, which was a great use of a Hyatt cert expiring this week. Unfortunately, several conversations with the front desk and eventually the manager made it clear that it's not a viable Shabbos option.
The stairwell going upstairs can only be accessed on the 2nd floor, not the ground level. Even when going down from your room through the stairwell (which does exit to the street, but they refused to meet us outside to open it for us), every floor has motion sensors that turn on the lights as you go up or down. There are also no manual exterior doors.
Theoretically some of these could have work-arounds, but the attitude from everyone we spoke to made it clear they had no interest in helping with any of them. Rather than cancel our trip, we moved to the Embassy Suites (40k per night), which is in a historic 300-year-old fort that has manual exterior doors, and staircases with no issues at all.
The rooms don't have full kitchens, but are all suites and have enough space to eat Shabbos meals, as well as sufficient counter space for a hot plate and crock pot. A small piece of duct tape on the room door and we didn't need anything from the front desk the entire Shabbos.
The walk from the hotel to shul is within the eiruv, and the hotel is conveniently located for a lovely Shabbos afternoon walk through the sights of historic downtown Charleston.
We met 3 other visiting couples in shul, all of whom were staying at the Hyatt, and all of whom said they would never have stayed there had they known the Shabbos issues involved. A 4th couple rented an AirBNB 2 blocks from the shul, only to discover that the only way in and out was through a door with an electric keypad.
I also mentioned this to the Rabbi and President of the shul as important info to share with visitors. Hope it saves some DDFers from future headaches as well.
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