Omni Shoreham Hotel

The honest review

The Omni Shoreham has anchored Woodley Park since 1930, and its family case rests on things downtown DC hotels structurally can't offer. The property sits on 11 acres bordering Rock Creek Park, and from April through October it runs a genuinely resort-style heated outdoor pool with a separate children's pool and hot tub — after a summer day route-marching kids across the National Mall, that pool deck is the difference between a good trip and a meltdown.

The Omni Kids Crew program is a real program, not marketing garnish: kids get an activity backpack at check-in, milk and cookies delivered the first night, and a dedicated kids' menu, with children under five eating free at Robert's Restaurant. It's the kind of small-touches package usually found at resorts rather than 836-room city hotels.

Location is the other half of the argument. The Woodley Park–Zoo Metro stop is a five-minute walk, putting the Smithsonian museums and the Mall about 15 minutes away on the Red Line — and the National Zoo, one of DC's best free family attractions, is walkable up Connecticut Avenue. The neighborhood itself is leafy and calm, with a strip of casual restaurants that handle kids without ceremony; parents trade downtown's walk-everywhere density for a quieter home base, which many prefer with young children.

Room logistics: the 784 standard rooms are classic-hotel sized and fit a family of four in a double-queen; the 52 one- and two-bedroom suites are where larger families should look, topping out at a 1,730-square-foot Presidential Suite that sleeps up to eight. The building's age reads as character in the public spaces and, occasionally, as quirk in the rooms — this is a renovated historic property, not a new build.

Pricing runs upper-mid for DC: figure $190–320 most of the year with averages around $285, spiking during cherry-blossom weeks. Against the Gaylord National out at National Harbor, the Shoreham trades the atrium spectacle for being inside the city on a Metro line — for museum-focused itineraries, that's usually the better trade.