This hotel is now a Quality Inn.
*****
The staff was super nice here but...
It was sort of an emergency stop, having left the beach to escape Sandy but not being able to drive all the way home due to fatigue.
1. At check-in, I was asked to initial and sign a form that said:
- the hotel was 100% smoke free and smoking in a guest room would result in a cleaning fee of $150. (I noticed some rooms had non-smoking emblems on the doors and some did not. I also noticed a smell of some sort of smoke emanating from one of the rooms near the far end of the hallway, where our room would have been had I not requested a room closer to the door leading to the stairway. It made sense, with us carrying seven or eight bags upstairs...)
- Pets not allowed and evidence of a pet in a room would result in a cleaning fee of $250. (Not sure what constituted "evidence" but we have no pets so...)
- Quality Inn of Whiteville is not responsible for "lost" items and/or valuables. Please store in a safe place. (Quotation marks mine. This made me wonder if there had been problems with theft at the hotel...)
- I agree that my liability for this bill is not waived and agree to be held personally liable in the event that the indicated person , company, or association fails to pay the full amount of these charges.
2. The room LOOKED nice but, our room at the beach was nicer (see full details below) and $10 less per night.
3. The parking lot is dark. Very few lights and not spaced well. It seems everyone wanted to park where their car could be seen, which is my only explanation for why someone thought it prudent to squeeze their Prius in the space between my car and a brick wall, causing me to have to squeeze into my car so I wouldn't hit their car when I opened my car door.
4. This hotel has two floors and no elevator. They do have a luggage cart but try getting it up a staircase. (We didn't think it would be smart to leave anything in our back seat so we each dragged several bags up the winding staircase leading to the second floor.
5. The handle on the outside of our room door appeared off kilter but when I tried to open it by turning the knob and pushing it with my hip, the door didn't budge so I thought it would be okay for us to sleep in the room.
6. After we got settled in, we noticed how loudly we could hear noises in the hallway. Voices sounded almost like they were in the room with us, we could hear doors closing, and if a door slammed, the wall that my headboard was on shook. (I was sitting against it.) I got up to make sure our door really was securely shut. It was. Then I noticed a gap between the floor and the bottom of the door. I stuffed a towel there, hoping to quell some of the noise. In the morning I noticed that there also appeared to be a substantial gap between the hinge side of the door and the wall. (Which explained why we still heard people talking after I stuffed the towel in the gap.)
7. When I grabbed a wash cloth to wash my face, I noticed it had a sour odor, like it had been wet and not properly dried until it was already mildewing. Yuck.
8. During my bed bug inspection, I also noticed an area of the carpet that seemed to have a old vomit smell... (Thankfully It wasn't a very strong odor and I wouldn't have noticed it if I hadn't been down on my knees examining seams in the mattress, box spring, and the chair next to the bed.)
9. The drapes in the room did not close, only the sheers. Very uncomfortable considering we were two unaccompanied females in a well-lit room facing a dark area outside. Thankfully my Girl Scout training usually keeps me prepared for such occurrences. I pulled out of of the flat sheets and binder clips I had taken to the beach and improvised an opaque drape to cover the opening between the room's drapes.
10. When I logged onto the hotel's wi-fi, I was surprised at what I read. The basic wi-fi was free and there was a statement that said I could upgrade to a faster speed if I wanted to pay for it.
Wow. How tacky. I have stayed in Econo Lodges and Red Roof Inns and gotten high speed internet included in the room rate.
I think a Quality Inn could live up to its name and do better.
11. The breakfast was good and perhaps the reason for the room rate. Vittles consisted of: bagels, bread, biscuits, cold cereal, scrambled eggs (tasted real, not powdered), bacon, yogurt, boiled eggs, milk (regular and 2%), coffee (regular and decaf), tea, and freshly made waffles. There was also a toaster for the bagels and bread. read more