Baymont by Wyndham Austin University Area — Hotel in Austin

Don't be tempted by the cheap prices. This is quite possibly the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at.

My wife and I seem to have had the same room as another reviewer, Hannah Leighann, but I wouldn’t be surprised if multiple rooms had the same issues.

Our room (156) had a broken door seal letting in dirt, air, and bugs. When we first checked in, several flies were already inside, and the seal made it noisy. The floor was filthy; I found out after walking barefoot and ending up with BLACK feet. One bedside outlet didn’t work. I’ve slept in worse, so after killing bugs and tidying up, the room was “usable.”

Then we sat on the bed, and it instantly sank almost to the frame. The bedsprings had completely failed, sagging in the middle. It held until the middle of the night, when we were jolted awake by loud creaking and several snaps in the springs. I was genuinely afraid they’d poke through and stab us.

We lay still until morning and requested a different room or a bed replacement. Here’s my one positive note: the front desk staff was actually pleasant. The young woman there immediately offered us a 2nd-floor room, reserved it alongside our current one for free, and gave us time to move our things. It was inconvenient since we were about to go sightseeing, but necessary.

While we were packing, she returned saying they could replace the bed while we were out. We came back exhausted, ready for a brand-new bed… only to find they hadn’t replaced anything. The mattress was stripped bare, with all bedding and pillows balled up on a chair.

We went to the front desk furious. The night worker (a man with glasses) apologized and explained they couldn’t replace the mattress after all, but had reserved another room (159) for us. We were taken aback as we did not expect them to still accommodate us after the neglect the housekeeping/maintenance had shown 156. He issued new keys and we moved over. Room 159 was actually decent: intact door seal, clean floors, working outlets, and a normal mattress. The only issue was a dying cockroach in the corner, which I quickly dispatched (don't get it twisted; this was still unacceptable)

The male worker even gave us keys back to 156 when we realized we’d left something. In hindsight, the staff truly did their best with what they had. The problem, I suspect, lies with maintenance, who seem to refuse basic repairs and allow rooms to decay.

Despite the surprisingly good customer service, I cannot stress this enough: DO. NOT. BOOK HERE. You’d be better off sleeping with the bats under Congress Avenue Bridge than saving a few bucks on this dump. I’ve stayed in many bad hotels, but this one...

This place takes ghetto to whole new level. I've stayed at hundreds if not thousands of hotels and motels across the country in just about every major city and in small towns and not one of them were even half as bad as this place or as expensive. It's not worth $50/night let alone the insane price of $100/night they are charging! There are so many nicer 3-4 star hotels in much nicer cities for less than $100/night. Most of the guests were homeless and living there. All THREE ice machines were broken and out of order. I spoke with another guest and they said they have been that way for months. We had to get ice at a convenient store. The people in the room next to ours smoked weed 24/7 both inside and outside of their room and our room reeked of pot so bad I got a headache from it. One room a few doors down had a toddler hanging out of their window screaming the entire day and late into the night. Probably trying to get air because her parents were also smoking pot in their room. The entire motel reeked of pot. The couple in the room on the other side of mine got into a violent fight and were screaming and cussing and throwing stuff. It was so bad the walls were shaking. At least two or three other altercations occurred outside in the parking lot and around the building in just the one day we were there. It seamed like someone was screaming every couple of minutes. It felt like we were in a circus. The parking lot was littered in garbage and was filthy. 70% of the cars outside had broken windows or flat tires or were full of clothes or garbage. The WiFi was so slow it was totally useless. Breakfast was supposed to be 6am to 9am. At 7am there was nothing but a couple pieces of bread and some Raisin Bran. There was no milk or butter. Just dry cereal and slices of white bread. We originally planned to stay 4 nights but since the room was $100/night, we ended up packing up after one night and moved to another much nicer hotel next door that was only $10-$20 more a night. I wish we had just paid extra and stayed there to begin with. It was like night and day compared to Baymont. The hot breakfast alone was worth the $10-$20 more a day. Just not being there is worth $10-$20...

Update: so my mom booked this hotel for me because I am currently homeless and jobless and living in Austin alone while my mom lives in Pennsylvania. Since I’m homeless and have no money I had not eaten anything in at least a week and since my hotel stay came with free breakfast I was starving to say the least come breakfast time. I was unaware that I wasn’t allowed to take anything from breakfast back to my room and that I was only allowed to gorge myself and look like a glutton in front of the people around me. So the female worker told me I wasn’t allowed after I did so but that it was okay just this once and that was after I was finished. Then I came to the front desk to ask for something and she didn’t respond to my needs and instead started yelling at me saying that I need to pay extra and that they watched me on camera taking food back to my room very rudely. She acted like I did this after she talked to me the first time which was not true. My mom had no problem paying for it. We were okay with that part. I completely understand that but she didn’t need to be rude and come at me like that. She could’ve just explained it to me. I’m sorry that I’m homeless and was hungry and I only came back for items that were empty the first time I came to eat anyway. I doubt she told her manager that she told me it was fine this time when she talked to me about it the first time anyway and it should’ve been left with that first time because there was no continuation after that. Maybe you should tell people they can’t bring food back to their rooms especially when I watched other people do the same. This caused me to drop it from 5 stars to 2.

Rooms were nice. Great prices and deals. Customer service exceeded expectations. They went above and beyond. Went out of there way to point me in the right direction. The experience was fantastic and memorable. The staff is excellent. The guy working overnight is wonderful as well as the woman who helped me initially book the room. The breakfast was awesome. The hot food was cooked fresh in front of me. (5 stars ⭐️...