This hotel was an odd mix of very good and not quite so good, with the very good outweighing the not quite so good by quite a large margin, but not by a large enough margin to make it excellent.
The not quite so good things kept me from rating this property 5 stars. In fact, some of the very good things were mitigated by the not so quite in a really strange way. For one, they have a beautiful pool area, but it's odd because it's ground level, right next to the street, with virtually no visual privacy from the office building across the street or people just walking by on the sidewalk (the walls surrounding the pool were very low, maybe about 3-1/2 feet high).
They have a terrific hot breakfast with a DIY waffle iron and both plain and chocolate waffle batters, sausage patties, and a large selection of continental (bread and pastry items). Another thing we really liked was that the juice/coffee bar and a little refrigerator with yogurt were left unlocked during the day, unlike some hotels where as soon as the free breakfast time is over, everything gets stashed away under lock and key.
The room was beautiful with large comfy beds, but the beds were so high they were not so easy to get into or out of. I am 5'6" and had to sort of hop up backward to sit on the edge of the mattress - my mother, who is 5'4" and walks with a cane, had to hoist herself up with her hands (and a couple of times, I had to help her).
There were signs in the 3rd hallway with arrows pointing toward a mythical ice machine - when I asked a hotel staff member, she told me that the ice machine had been removed from the 3rd floor for sanitary reasons and there was an ice machine one floor up in the samespot (ok, but why leave the signs on the 3rd floor?).
The poor desk clerk was pleasant and hardworking but she was all alone at the desk. I checked in around 6pm and she was back at the desk early the next morning. When I asked her if she'd been there all night, she said, no, she left at the end of the evening shift and came back for the early morning shift. There were no towels by the pool and she couldn't call anyone to bring them out, but rather she had to bring them out herself. She also manned the breakfast service by herself. The telephone in my room didn't work, and she got a new one for me, but called me and asked if I would mind coming down and getting it because she had no one to bring it up to me. Once, when I was standing at the front desk waiting to ask her something, she was on the phone with a customer who was giving her a very large problem and keeping her on the phone for a very long time, to the point where I was joined in line by 3 other guests waiting to check in.
I don't blame the desk clerk for that, but I do blame management. While the desk clerk was busy dealing with the customer on the phone, why didn't they have a second desk clerk to deal with other guests? Why was there only one desk clerk on any give shift who had to do virtually everything? It seems like such a bad business move it's elementary - if the one desk clerk has to leave the desk to attend to a guest, who's manning the desk? No one.
I guess my overall impression is that this Comfort Inn has upgraded itself to the point where it looks and feels like it's more upscale, but without the know-how from management to actually make it so.
And the other reviewers are right about the creepy little parking lot. It forks at the entrance - when you enter the driveway, you can turn right, and the parking lot will dead end at a wall, or you can go straight, and if there are no parking spaces, you have to turn right again onto the street (it's a one-way street) and go back around the block if you want to try the other side of the parking lots. Very weird. Also - the handicap spots were not the parking spaces closest to the entrance. How strange is that?
- Comfort Inn Columbus
- Best Western Columbus
- Columbus Best Western
