Loyalty points got me here and price. BW is particularly generous with their points as they don’t take them if you go to sleep for a little while. I would call the BW brand misleading for this property. It’s not good enough to wear that label compared against the countless properties I’ve used across this nation. The problems I did report to the staff did not get prompt attention. I would grade my overall stay as D-. The pictures you see are true and correct when it was young, and it’s not even close to young. A whole lot of cheating everything about the business is what you get. I’ll call this “Best Western cheats the customer inn.”

They leave the trash gondolas outside full of trash over night. Of course this attracts homeless varmints going through the trash late at night, and they knocked my rear view mirror off my car on the way. I went out very early for breakfast only to catch someone emptying a whole gondola onto the ground. Not only does this look bad it attracts the wrong kind of people to the property and subsequently puts my car and belongings at a higher risk than a property that puts the trash in the dumpster at night. What kind of hotel stores garbage in gondolas next to the stairwell over night? Bad idea and it looks bad to boot.

This place is OLD but they have done a fairly good job of keeping the place current. Still, first impressions are everything, and they have allowed the non-skid paint on their walkways to begin peeling in huge hunks. It looks terrible, quite frankly, and says something about the willingness to spend on the property in other places. The stuff is under extreme use rolling heavy carts over it every day and of course its not going to stay there very long using it that way. It should never be allowed to deteriorate this much before getting some paint and covering that up.

In the bathroom there is mold around the tub. The caulk should have been cut out and replaced long before this. The tub has an anti-scald valve installed backwards where the hottest temp is closest to off rather than the coldest. These valves cost a lot more than conventional and to buy that and install it backwards is an act of insanity. They are an attempt to idiot proof the world and when you install it wrong it makes risk even higher. The tub itself has worn out as all of it’s slick surfaces are rough. Every dirty foot that has set in it left dirt behind such that six days in here leaves the bottom of it black. It requires daily cleaning at this age and I got none. The room also has one of those fake bathroom fans that only makes noise and circulates the same old air around the room. The engineer who invented that should be fired, and the product should never have been sold. It does absolutely nothing but use electricity and add noise but it does not clear odors or humidity from anything. Why buy it in the first place? This one worked as designed adding no value, adding noise, using electricity, and stirring the same old air in a circle. It’s another place in this building that’s a lie attempting to look like the guest is getting something they are not.

In my room is an unsafe table lamp which I just unplugged. The socket came loose from it’s holder and leaves line voltage exposed. Those things are never used in a hospitality room for safety reasons. Hotel table lamps always have switches on the base but not at this place.

The lighting in this room is bizarre for today’s standards. There are switches in here that it’s not obvious what they were for years ago, and by today they seem to control nothing. There is a niche where the bed was intended to go with reading lights and a switch by the bed. Across the room are a short span of track lights from the era where that was the whiz bang thing everyone wanted. The way these were installed they are stuck with them unless they are willing to deal with drywall repairs too. They do work but the reason for them has gotten away. The bed was turned 90 degrees and the lamps leaving the head board fixtures light up nothing important. Very curious why the bed was moved in the first place..

I’m sick of Covid as an excuse for cheating the customer of value but the whole industry has jumped on that idea and I doubt we will ever get back to full service. The housekeeping around here has not been adequate as they didn’t even ask if I want it. It provokes me to ask for every day in revenge even though I don’t really need it. Lowering your costs and blaming it on covid while charging the same rates does not work for me and I will respond by using supplies needlessly and adding cost intentionally more than I otherwise would because I didn’t get a choice, and I don’t believe they are doing anything more than putting up stickers claiming to be doing marathon cleaning, when they aren’t doing any cleaning. I’m not going to give them any prizes for doing nothing and telling me it’s helping me.

The door lock is a mortise style and the holes that hold it are stripped. It swings out any time the door is opened and requires coaxing it back in place to get it closed and locked. That’s one of many clues to the age of this place that ought to be remedied. The sheer curtains that still let light in are sun rotted and shredding while the black out curtain on the inside of it has holes in it big enough to let a lot of light in. It’s quite obvious they were bought in the 80’s and should have been gone by the 2000’s. This kind of thing leaves the guest feeling like this is a ratty establishment, and I think they pretty much earn that title.

The free breakfast was surprising. They offer those fake scrambled things intended to look like eggs, plenty of paper thin bacon or sausage links and a suitable amount of breads but no sweet breads, and coffee or juice. I’ve seen a lot less for free breakfast and this one is better than a lot of them but everyone should have at least a cinnamon roll. There was an employee on the flat grill and I didn’t ask if they would make fried eggs or pancakes but it looks like they intend to offer free cooked to order breakfast with a little twist.

The most annoying thing in this room is a “clean” TV remote designed for hospitals that has no option to use the alternative TV inputs. I don’t know if they are just being cheap, or if they want to prevent me from using the full function of the TV. They are not getting what they wanted. I went out and bought myself a full universal remote and I will definitely leave this room with it set somewhere that maintenance has to come out and correct it for the next guest in revenge. I need the TV for a laptop monitor and I’m not going to accept this and walk away. This is not acceptable quality by any stretch of the imagination…

It’s a surprising fact how many things life has to offer us that can be smoked leaving no trace of smoking behind yet a smidgen of tobacco can’t be hidden at all and the evidence very stubborn to get rid of when we actually want it gone. Oh you bet I smoke everything but tobacco in the room in an act of defiance and a belief it’s a right to use this space any way I want when I’m paying for that use. When trying to seal their smoke detector I learn I am safe from accidentally setting it off. The battery is totally dead and it’s a home model not intended for use in a public building. Were there a fire this is a useless piece of plastic screwed to the ceiling in an effort to get it past the inspectors with no concern at all for the guest dying in a fire. While I’m not running off screaming this is a complete abandonment of fire safety practices REQUIRED in lodging properties. It’s the wrong model and it’s not working even if it was correct. Thanks again for nothing; this property is not good enough for the brand its wearing.

I do like to write hotel reviews and the length of this one is proportional to my length of stay and how many things I had a chance to see that I shouldn’t have. Other GM’s from other brands have let me know they don’t value this much detail and that just motivates me to be sure to talk about everything wrong. If there’s anything I wrote about they don’t like it’s also something no guest should have been exposed to. All anyone needs to do is hide it then I won’t have any input material to comment on.

Holiday Inns used to tell everyone the best surprise is NO surprise. They were not kidding. This place is full of surprises the franchise police need to see. The Brand is being cheated of what it’s supposed to represent at this property and I can’t recommend this place mostly because it’s almost what it’s supposed to be but they are charging me for all of it. The BW brand is a big lie as it always has been that it’s a chain. Every darned one of them is privately owned and the brand represents a standard of quality. They grew up out of WWII in an era where a traveler had no idea what he is getting. The better properties banded together with a commitment to high standards. This property is committed to get your money and do the least they can to get by the inspectors and they are not remotely interested in spending to maintain but will spend the least to try and defeat the purpose for the brand. I despise companies or people who’s philosophy is to see how little they can get by with. For that reason I won’t come back here, and I’d warn anybody this is a portion of what BW intends to be. Old hotels get sold to independent owners because they age out and can’t meet standards. This building is too old to be a Best Western and it would cost too much to bring it up to new. Caveat Emptor.