Drury Inn & Suites Columbus Polaris — Hotel in Columbus

Update April 12

Interesting and insincere response to my complaint below.

Not sure what "We hope you can get the with appropriate team member to help you get them resolved" even means (?) but didn't those credit card charges magically disappear within 36 hours of my complaint..

Shout out to my "angel from St. Pete's!" This lovely woman from Florida gave me one of her unused bar tickets when we had an issue with ours (I will explain). You rock, angel!

IMPORTANT: My mom in her late 80s had to try and fix the toilet in her room (318) in the middle of the night. She told the same guy at check-out the next day. I sincerely hope this plumbing issue gets fixed because I wouldn't want other travelers going through the hassle my mom did at 3 am.

Rundown of this stay:

Insanely busy, and it's questionable if this hotel can accommodate this many people in its current configuration (dining room inadequately sized, pool area seemed drastically overfilled... are capacity limits even posted?).

Check-in person seemed efficient but unfriendly, and he either forgot or didn't care to give us one bar ticket each, which is necessary to grab three cheap beers each during "Kickback." After a long drive, it wasn't fun waiting an extra 40 minutes between check-in and the bar line-up to get this resolved.

Kickback food decent (think cheap off-strip Vegas buffet) but needed constant refilling due to number of people, so lots of waiting.

Customer service during Kickback varied. Young woman bartending had a great smile and showed true grace under pressure. But other employees were rude when I thanked them for their hard work. Before I transitioned to travel writing, I worked in reservations for a major airline to learn inside stuff. It's mighty hard to be efficient and personable when there's 50 calls on hold, but I always tried and generally succeeded. Maybe he was having a bad day? But sorry, there's no good excuse for barely thawed hot dog buns.

Ladies at breakfast far friendlier and very efficient. The "same old" Drury breakfasts are going downhill for us though. Hamptons and Embassy Suites pretty much beat this every time.

The only amenity at Drury Inn Polaris that impressed me and the hubby are the recumbent bikes in the workout room—no line ups to use and nothing broken, go figure!

Prior review:

I'll edit this review later today with more specific information on our experience here, but in the interim, there are two incorrect charges pending on our credit card (CC) for a stay at Drury Polaris almost a week ago.

Yesterday, My husband spoke to the front desk clerk at the Polaris location who sounds like the same person who checked us in (more on that experience later).

I do not accept this person's insincere recommendation to "wait and see if the charges are removed" from our CC. To be absolutely clear, he did not insinuate we'd damaged the room in any way... because we didn't.

We stayed the following night at Drury Inn Bowling Green and at Embassy Suites in Nashville last Friday, and in both instances, the "damage deposit" was refunded to our CC immediately following checkout.

I was (unfortunately) already preparing a negative review on Drury Inn Polaris before my husband informed me of the CC situation. Now I'm rethinking future stays at any Drury Inn entirely.

We were in Room 312 on April 3rd. I had two invoices emailed to me for our stay, one for our room and one for my mother that we verified was billed to her CC.

My husband just got off the line with our CC company again, and they reiterated that the "merchant" is responsible for fixing these errors.

I want this problem with the CC to be rectified immediately. I'll also be forwarding this complaint to HO through our Drury Rewards account and request that customer service at Drury Polaris...

This was my first and last stay at a Drury Inn. My husband and I stayed with my sister and brother-in-law in a 2-room suite. The room itself was good for all of us, the beds were comfortable (even the pull-out sofa bed). The room was spacious and had everything we needed.

The rest of the hotel, however, was not good for anyone to stay here. We arrived during the "Kickback" evening mealtime. It was crowded, but the food was good. We wanted to go to the pool, and checked it out at about 7:00 p.m. There were at least 10 children in the hot tub along with a couple adults, and other children running around and jumping into the pool. We assumed that by 9:00 (the pool closed at 10:00) it would be less used by children. We went down at 9:00, and there were over a dozen children, ages about 8-12, jumping back and forth from the hot tub into the pool. There were three adults with all the children. We swam for a little while, and then when the hot tub only had two adult in it, we went into that. Shortly after the two adults left the pool area. At this point I counted 12 children in the pool being watched by one adult. The children were splashing, throwing a nerf ball around and jumping in and out of the pool. A family with two small children (ages 4 or so) came in to use the pool; I felt sorry for them. At that point we started to leave and a manager came in and asked the children in the pool where their parents were. The one adult, who seemed oblivious to any of the chaos the children were causing, stated she was in charge of the children. I pointed out to the "adult" that no children were to be in the hot tub unless accompanied by an adult. She stated she would dip her feet into the hot tub so that it would be okay for the children to stay in there. The manager told the children they had to be at least 10 years old to be in the hot tub and asked them to leave. At that point we left, so I don't know what transpired from there.

We left and went back to our room at near 9:30. When we got back, my sister stated that some children had knocked on the door and run off. We assumed they had just gotten their room wrong. At nearly 10:00 it happened again, and my husband went out and caught up with four children, probably 12-14 years old, that were causing this. He had them come downstairs where the manager was to locate parents. The parents were downstairs drinking. The manager stated she had to tell the parents earlier to go outside as they were causing a commotion in the bar area.

I guess with the fact that children stay free and food is provided morning and evening, that this is the clientele that frequents Drury Hotels. I don't know how much leeway the managers are given to evict guests who cause issues. I don't know if there is a solution that Drury could put in place -- maybe one adult to every three children in the pool area. As a side note, our trip included a stay earlier in the week at the Laconia Motorcycle Bike Week. We stayed in a hotel that was completely full, mostly of Harley-Davidson motorcyclist, and it was quiet and everyone was respectful. This Drury hotel, by contrast, seemed to be a mix of Animal House and Lord...

Stayed here one Saturday night with my husband and 1 year old son. We had a great overall experience. The staff were friendly, the room was spacious and seemed clean, and the food/drink offerings were great for all three of us! The pool/hot tub area is nice and was well-stocked with towels.

Not a complaint about the hotel but just an explanation of our experience: We live 90 min from Columbus and could've driven up for our event on Sunday, but chose to stay in a hotel for a couple of reasons - one of which was swimming in a hotel pool. Our son LOVES swimming and we've really missed it since Labor Day a few weeks ago. We planned to swim with our son before dinner and again in the morning after breakfast. When we got to the pool after checking in, there were a handful of pre-teen boys and a couple of dads in the pool room (with their backs to their boys, talking about how much beer they were drinking). More boys kept showing up (along with more unconcerned parents) and the boys got rowdier every minute. The group of boys moved back and forth between the pool and hot tub, jumping in on top of each other and/or pushing each other into the pool. We sat in the far corner of the pool to try to keep our son safe in the chaos. We stayed for 40 min, hoping the boys would calm down or their parents would call them out for being inconsiderate, but that didn't happen (one dad asked his son to stop splashing so much and he obliged). We finally gave up when ~10 boys linked arms and jumped into the pool together, causing such waves that we couldn't even safely sit on the steps of the pool without falling over. We swam at a neighboorhood pool all summer, so we're very used to adolescent boys having fun... this was just out of control. Anyway, we went back to the pool in the morning and had a great time - even played with an energetic 7 year old boy. I totally get that this hotel is great for groups and groups can get rowdy. Just wanted to share our experience, as I have learned to better prepare my...