We stayed for 3 nights during the power outage. It was clean in the room and for as packed as it was everything ran well and they did a great job - thanks Holly and Dan (only names I remember) We were at the Holiday Inn express downtown Hartford for one night. They were super unorganized, the room was tiny and they charged almost as much for one night as we paid for 3 nights at La Quinta. This place was a lifesaver.

So the good and the bad:

Good:
- Fairly large sized rooms
- Decent price that matched the area and class of service
- The folks at the front desk are really friendly and were quite accommodating given the sudden storm had thrown their lives into chaos along with everyone else in the area

Bad:
- Caught housekeeping cutting corners by not changing my sheets. I marked them and found that they had not changed them when I returned.
- The carpets should be chucked out and replaced with hardwood floors or something. Some of the wall paper is peeling throughout the place.
- The furnishings seem cheap and the microwave/fridge were just an after-thought
- Not enough plugs for all the stuff modern business travelers carry: laptop, cell phone, MyFi, iPad, camera
- Cold showers after 3 minutes
- Area seemed sketchy and property was adjacent to a police station
- Fitness center is a bare room with a treadmill and recumbent stationary bike
- Nothing but carbs for breakfast. No protein. None. Fruit was.. canned fruit chunks in a vat
- Adjacent restaurant is under construction

This hotel kept me warm during the crazy power outage this past week, and most importantly at a fair price. The hotel never raised the price above their normal rates, even when all the other hotels did.

The pros: Clean rooms, recently updated, plentiful parking, spacious rooms.

Cons: Hotel was overwhelmed! No hot water most weekends, cleaning staff was slow and not very thorough during daily cleaning, ice machines frequently ran out of ice.

Overall I think the hotel did a fine job keeping up with the unusual demand this week, and I know they did the best they could.

We have stayed here multiple times over the past two years as they have large rooms, good rates and a very convenient location for us. With elite LQ frequent stay status, I reserved our room (for 8 days) a month ago: at check-in, they put in a inferior room, claiming that was all they had left. ie, they failed to plan ahead.

Things are slipping. It is kind of a sad game to see what they are out of at breakfast each day - today it was yogurt, regular bagels, hot water for tea, and spray for the waffle maker. Cleanliness of breakfast room and public areas needs improvement - they apparently do the hallways only weekly.

Went to print my boarding passes this evening, spent 10 minutes getting through to the airline, and the printer was out of toner - the desk clerk said "Yeah, I guess I should put a sign on it", but she never did. She never offered to let me use the office printer.

Time to look for alternative lodging.