We found the hotel while passing through on a T-Giving road trip. The price was just right for our budget, and my Holiday Inn frequent-stayer membership got us a free upgrade from a room to a suite. The room had a nice firm bed and a pull-out sofa for our five year old. It also had a microwave and small fridge. There are several restaurants in the area, a Wal-Mart Supercenter, and a stand-alone Starbucks essentially across the street. Oddly enough, we only saw one gas station close in the area, but it worked for us. The breakfast was awesome for a “hotel breakfast” (doughnuts, muffins, biscuits, gravy, scrambled eggs, sausage, milk, juice, etc, etc). Not sure why this place is getting mediocre reviews otherwise, but to-each-his-own. Maybe the suites are nicer than the regular rooms, but we didn’t see any other rooms, so have nothing to judge against. There was a decent looking indoor pool on the ground floor that was full of kids during our stay, but we didn’t do any swimming, so didn’t go inside that area. Our room WAS at the end of a hallway, across from the open stairwell, and every time someone entered or exited the building from the stairwell door, the sound reverberated up the stairwell and made everything in our room shudder. We just pulled the stairwell fire door closed and all was good. Free high-speed wireless internet was "open", and we were happy not to have to dicker around with pass-keys or "one time use cards" we have seen at other hotels.

My girlfriend and I spent Sat. night in room 300 at this hotel on 11/17/07. Housekeeping knocked on the door at 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday. I informed them that we did not require service until check out. An hour later when I was down picking up a paper, a male entered the room with out knocking and surprised Carrie coming out of the shower. I brought this to managements attention and was told they "were sorry". This level of service is completely unacceptable and quite frankly, a bit frightening. We will no longer be patronizing this hotel chain and for those of you who do, make damn sure your door bar is engaged.
Troy Flora

If you want to stay in a hotel where you can see EVERYTHING in the room when you turn off the lights, this is the place. Even with the blackout curtain in place, if you don't put something in the window, the curtain will be blowing up all night. The blackout curtain is not high enough up, so you have light coming from the top. The door doesn't fit, so there's light coming from under the door, around the side, and on the top. Other than that (or if you have eyeshades), this wasn't a bad hotel

This hotel is one of the best in Emporia. Located off the Kansas Turnpike, between I-135 and I-35. Very clean and quiet even with the interstate nearby. Friendly staff, great breakfest. Just weak water pressure in the shower, took longer to get on the road because of this.