Moxy Columbia Downtown — Hotel in Columbia

As a Lifetime Titanium Elite Member of Marriott I rented a room to provide a space for my 17-year-old daughter and just 10 of her friends to enjoy a fun, grown-up birthday gathering. We planned a variety of activities, including playing the lobby games, eating cake, and a trip to the rooftop to watch the sunset; followed by a visit to the taco stand in the hotel. I even invited a few adult friends to join for drinks at the bar after the teenagers departed. When the teenagers attempted to access the rooftop, they were turned away due to an age restriction that had not been communicated to us during our prior property tour. This lack of information was disappointing, but understandable. Undeterred the teens decided to walk down the street for Boba tea instead. However, the situation deteriorated after this. Upon returning to the common area, I encountered an unknown man in the private conference room, which I had been informed was off-limits unless reserved. However, Publix had placed my daughter’s cake in this area. I promptly moved the cakes. Then I told the manager he wasn’t with me and she said that the man was likely the owner! However, he had not said a word to me as I moved the cakes. He just stared straight ahead. This interaction set a troubling tone for the evening. Ten or 15 minutes later another woman joined him in the room, the manager followed. They seem to have a brief meeting, and then the woman came out and identified herself as one of the owners and she asked me was I the guest on the property? This is where the evening took an extreme wrong turn. I told her that I was the guest on property and then she then proceeded to tell me how her manager had been too nice by not forcing me to rent a private area for the “party” because I was “inconveniencing” her other guests who were bar attendees and they would eventually want to use the common area, where the 10 teenagers were located. She went on to say that her bartenders would also need to be tipped for the sodas that I had purchased from the dollar tree for the teenagers, insinuating that I was utilizing her staff and not paying them for their service. This was particularly frustrating, as I had brought my own meager refreshments for the teenagers to avoid any disruption at the bar. The owner made me feel as though my small group was an unwelcome nuisance, and that my business was not valued. So I packed the gifts and balloons and took them to my room. The owner’s comments regarding tipping further reinforced my concerns about being treated differently, possibly due to assumptions she made about me which were grounded in bias beliefs about race or class. This is not how I expected to be treated as a paying customer. As a result of this experience, I also had to relocate my adult friends who wanted to enjoy the rooftop bar to another venue. We were not in anyone’s way, but we were made to feel as if we were unwanted and intruding on the privacy of the “bar” patrons. Despite the fact that I was paying Customer with a hotel room, I was basically told that I couldn’t host my 10 guests in the lobby, because I wasn’t going to tip the bartenders! It is important to note that another customer brought in a full spread of food and cake and set up in the outer lobby without a reserved space and their numbers exceeded 10 people, yet they were not approached, they also were not people of color.My guests spent 1 hour playing cards, walked down Main Street, came back, opened gifts ate cake, and left-about 1.45 hrs total time. I truly hope that my experience was not reflective of the establishment's values. The hotel itself is lovely, the manager was lovely but the treatment I received from the owner was far from satisfactory. I believe that all guests deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, no matter what their age or color is. For the record I tip generously when I am provided with services. But, this is an occasion where I was not provided with service and yet I was accused of not tipping based on nothing more than my skin color and a...

This weekend, I decided to do a staycation at the new Moxy Hotel in Columbia. Initially, I had no plans to write a review. I recognize this is a new business, and there are bound to be growing pains. I genuinely wanted to extend grace, as I could see the potential for the hotel to improve, and one of its redeeming qualities was its staff—most of whom were excellent. Unfortunately, my experience took a turn, and I feel compelled to share an honest review.

The Moxy is a boutique hotel with a minimalist, eclectic design. This isn’t typical for Columbia, so the smaller room sizes might catch some people off guard. That wasn’t an issue for me, but the problems started upon check-in when I discovered there was no heat in the room. It was freezing, and despite the hotel being nearly empty, it took almost two hours to move me to another room.

The new room wasn’t much better. It had only one washcloth, no soap dispenser, and visible cables hanging from the TV. The bed linens were low quality, feeling like something from a budget site like Shein or Temu. Ventilation in the small space was poor, making the room feel stuffy and uncomfortable. I also noticed some structural design issues, but I understand this is an older building, so I let that go.

On day two, I had to leave the room much earlier than planned due to a false fire alarm that required me to walk down several flights of stairs. While inconvenient, I chalked it up to the hotel still working out the kinks.

The food truck on-site, offering Mexican cuisine, was a highlight. The food was great, and the service was excellent. Most of the staff were friendly and helpful, which was one of the reasons I initially decided not to leave a negative review. I could see the vision for this hotel, and I felt that with time, it could become a great spot.

However, everything changed after I checked out. I received multiple alerts from my credit card company about charges from the hotel. At first, I assumed they were just delayed charges, but when I tried to use my card later in the day, it was declined for a business purchase due to these pending transactions.

I called the hotel to figure out what was going on and spoke with a staff member named Trinika. She informed me they were unable to process the transaction for my stay, which made no sense since I had already been charged on two separate cards—one for the original booking and another for extending my stay. Both transactions showed up as pending on my credit card accounts.

Despite explaining this to Trinika, she insisted I needed to provide another $400+ to cover the stay. I tried to explain how hotel transactions work: charges are held as pending for the duration of the stay and clear once the final total is reconciled. At this point, I had to conference in my credit card company, and even after the agent confirmed the pending charges, Tanika became combative and dismissive, refusing to acknowledge the issue.

She claimed the pending charge didn’t guarantee payment and told me to “calm down” when I pressed for clarification. Her tone was condescending, and her inability to resolve the issue professionally was frustrating. At that point, I was done engaging with her.

My advice? Avoid the Moxy Hotel for now. Give it some time—perhaps until the summer—for the kinks to be worked out and, hopefully, for staff training or turnover. The concept is promising, but the execution, particularly in terms of operations and guest service, has a...

Take this all with a grain of salt, we are a youngish couple traveling with a newborn and young child, I don't think we are the target audience for this place. That being said- this place was the worst hotel experience I've had. Ever. And there was a time in my life when I was living day to day out of the cheapest hotel I could find for the night.

To start, the rooms are beyond tiny. At a guess, maybe 10' x 30'? We got a double queen because of the child and reserved a pac n play (kudos on them for offering this). The queen beds were pushed together as close as they could (frame to frame) and we had to shuffle sideways around them to get to the other side. It was difficult to find a place to jam the pac n play and we had to rearrange all of it luggage any time we wanted to use the door or get to the bathroom. We went to target and bought Clorox wipes because no surface was clean. There's was a tiny mini fridge, but we had to use a cooler with ice to store or breast milk in because the fridge didn't actually cool very much. To fill said cooler we had to go down to the bar because the ice machine was broken. We had to purchase a small water kettle because there was no available source for hot water to warm bottles and no microwave to heat water. The front desk staff double as bartenders. They were all cool and polite and helpful as they could be, but also busy with bar guests. When asking for extra towels (only two sets in our double queen room) the bar staff/front desk didn't at first know where to get them, and forget having someone take them up to our room while we were ourselves stepping out. And to top it all off, there was a loose, cut, love electrical wire coming from under the bed that was sparking that my son stepped on and got shocked. Thankfully it was low voltage, I assume maybe like a broken under bed lighting system or something, but that was just yet another mark in the "no thank you" column.

Unless you just plan on getting trashed at the rooftop bar and need a convenient place to sleep it off or plan on hosting an orgy where the proximity of the beds to one another may be a plus, I would steer well clear. And to be fair, I think those are the category of customer this place is trying to cater to. If that's what you're looking for, I'm not gonna yuck your yum, but if not maybe find...