I realize part of this is the fault of Dulles Airport: that the counter near the pick-up curb where you expect to find hotel shuttle information and rental car agencies was just a bare wall with no staff, that the accessibility services person pushed us through so quickly that we didn't have a chance to look for info inside the terminal, that there was no courtesy phone connected to local hotels. The INTERNATIONAL arrivals terminal should NOT have services predicated on the idea that everyone arrives with a functional smartphone!
Nevertheless, the hotels know all this, and could be more proactive on the part of their guests to make sure that we don't fall through the cracks!
When we finally took a taxi to the hotel after standing in the freezing cold for almost an hour, we were told that our booking should have said that we would need to call for the shuttle (it did not). We were told that the hotel's website says that you need to call to summon the shuttle (it does not). It would have been clear from our booking that we paid with a foreign credit card and reside in Germany, so the staff could have contacted us via this app to inform us of the need to call for a shuttle upon arrival, but they did not.
We fell through the cracks, which made the end of an already exhausting day even worse.
However, the management did reduce our bill by an amount comparable to the cost of the taxi, which was the right thing to do, and the reason why this review is not more scathing.