Americas Best Value Inn Brainerd, Brainerd

Well after a day of work I decided to take a nap. About 20 minutes into my nap the owner walked right into my room! Being kind of groggy from the nap I didn't say much at the time. I got up showered and went to the front desk. Her reply to me questioning her was the "she was just making sure everything was ok". Why would you feel the need to walk into a room with a do not disturb sign up without knocking? Unfortunetly they own the Rodeway Inn also, so I have no escape since I use a corporate lodging (company use). No wonder why we were the only people staying there all week.

My friends and I made reservations to stay here one night. We arrived at the hotel at noon (keep in mind the official check in isn't until 3). The outside of the hotel did not look kept up. We walked in and what we saw wasn't much better! The smell of stale smoke hit you the second you walked in the door. My friends and I went to look at our room and found that it smelled 10 times worse than the lobby. We made reservations for a NON SMOKING room and were placed in a smoking room. I am allergic to smoke and also have asthma and broke out in hives while we were there. I went to use the bathroom in our room and the toilet seat was sticky and looked in the shower to find mildew and mold. I would have rather not showered, than to even stepfoot in that tub! As if that's not enough, there was a hole in the bathroom door that had not been fixed. I would have rather slept in my car then to have slept in the beds. Who knows what we would have found! At 12:15-12:30 we went to the manager to receive a refund and tell him that we were not staying at the hotel because of the conditions. He refused and handed us a paper that said you had to cancel within 48 hours. We drove 3 hours from home and there is NO WAY possible we were going to drive up prior to our visit to check out the hotel! We ended up only receiving 50% back and the mananger said he'd only refund us the remaining 50% if he were to rent out the room that night! We had to pay him even though we didn't even stay there and we had checked in before the actually checkin time! Three words to describe the Econo Lodge Brainerd...unbearable, filthy, and nauseating! Three words to describe the quality of service...appalling, unpleasant, and discourteous! DO NOT STAY HERE! We found high quality service and stay for the same price at a different hotel down the road!