You are flying into MSP for two days of meetings. The default is a glass box downtown with a lobby that looks like every other lobby, a $30 breakfast buffet, and a window that does not open. There is another option about five minutes away, and it is a National Register mansion.
300 Clifton is a boutique bed and breakfast in the Eugene J. Carpenter Mansion — the finest Georgian architecture in Minnesota, in the historic Loring Park neighborhood, minutes from the downtown core. It works surprisingly well as a business-travel base, and this is the practical case for it.
Where it actually sits
The address is 300 Clifton Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55403 — in Loring Park, minutes from downtown, the Walker Art Center and the theatre district. That matters for a work trip in a way it does not for a leisure one: you are not commuting in from a suburban office park, and you are not paying downtown-tower rates to be near the same meetings. See where we are on the map.
Loring Park itself is right there — a genuinely pleasant place to take a call outdoors or walk off a long afternoon. If your meetings are scattered around the metro, the Metro Transit trip planner will tell you exactly how to get there without a rental car.
The unglamorous questions, answered
Business travelers ask a specific and fairly short list of questions. Here are the honest answers.
- WiFi: complimentary, throughout the mansion.
- Air conditioning: yes, in every guest room.
- Parking: convenient guest parking is available; details come with your pre-arrival information.
- Check-in / check-out: check-in from 3:00 PM, check-out by 10:00 AM. Early check-in or late check-out can be added for $25 each, subject to availability.
- Front desk: there is not one. This is a privately operated historic mansion — staff are on site during the day, and you get a phone number to reach someone after hours.
- Breakfast: not served on site. Complimentary coffee is in the common area.
That front-desk answer is the real trade. If you need a 2:00 AM concierge, book the tower. If what you actually want is a quiet room in a beautiful old house and a door you can close on a long day, this is the better room.
Which room to book when you are travelling alone
The Estate Rooms are the most affordable — well-appointed queen rooms that share a clean, well-maintained bathroom rather than having a private en-suite. Every other room in the house has its own. For a solo trip where the room is mostly for sleeping and a laptop, they are hard to beat on value.
If the trip is longer, or you want space to actually spread out and work, the main mansion rooms are larger and grander: the Crystal Mansion, the Georgian, and the Grand Edwardian. In the Carriage House, the Coachman’s, the Hayloft and the Blacksmith’s Forge are cozier and one of a kind — the Forge even has its own private garden patio, which is a very good place to answer email.
What to do when the meetings end
This is where a mansion beats a hotel outright. There is a four-season garden hot tub under the open sky, which is a considerably better end to a travel day than a treadmill in a windowless mezzanine. Downstairs there is Gertrude’s Cistern — a speakeasy-style lounge and haunted video room with heated reclining seats.
Outside, you are within easy reach of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, which is free and open daily, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where general admission is always free — both excellent uses of a spare hour before a flight.
A client dinner in a 1916 English manor is a more memorable expense line than a chain steakhouse.
If your meetings are at the Convention Center
We wrote a separate guide to staying near the Minneapolis Convention Center that covers that corner of downtown specifically. And if the trip stretches into a weekend, our guide to a winter weekend in Minneapolis picks up where the work ends.
Book your work trip somewhere worth remembering
Rooms at 300 Clifton are limited and they go first on event weekends, so book early if your dates are fixed by a conference calendar. Check availability and reserve direct at 300clifton.com — we would rather host you than watch you check into another lobby.
Keep reading: Where to Stay for Zac Brown Band at Target Center: Friday, October 23, 2026