I know that this hotel is right at the Smokey Mountains, but I'm not sure this is the way to market it. Even though the room we had was designated as non-smoking and the air unit was vented to the outside, unfortunately, the bathroom vent wasn't. When we turned the bathroom light on, the fan came on automatically and pulling smoke into the room. (So I left it off and used the hall light while I was in there.) The next morning on our way back from breakfast, the smoke in the hallway was pallatable.

The people who worked there, with the exception of the breakfast host, were not the greatest. The guy who checked us in that night seemed to have to work at being friendly. When I had to come down to change rooms because the fan in the bathroom was banging (we hadn't even taken a single item off the luggage cart), I interrupted his cigarette break. He asked me if the clanging stopped, I guess expecting me to think it would stay that way the whole night. Not a chance I was willing to take, so he relented and switched our room. Unfortunately, he did not transfer the information for a late checkout to the new room, so the maids knocked on our door twice before 11AM (despite the "Do Not Disturb" sign being on the door), and right at 11AM the front desk called us to see if we were planning on staying another night. Mind you, the only reason we consistently stay at HIE is for the late checkout. We occasionally stay in the room until 2:00 PM, but mostly I just don't want to have to be rushed out the door. And, on this occasion we already had the luggage loaded back on the cart and were heading downstairs when the phone rang. I guess we must have been the last one's still in the hotel and they were chomping at the bit to get the last room cleaned.

Other than that, the room was what you would expect and the sleep we got that night was good. The host at breakfast was very friendly and made a point to give us a tour of our food options. As he got ready to clean up, he made a point to ask those of us there if there was anything else we wanted before he removed the food. He went out of his way to make us feel welcome and taken care of. The rest of the staff could take a few pointers from him.