HOM Hotel Gainesville, SureStay Collection by Best Western — Hotel in Gainesville

The online photos of Hom Hotel + Suites paint a beautiful picture of a sleek, modern, with almost a zen-like welcome feel and at first glance you'll see that too. Then you start to look around, it's as if they hired a contractor to put up a few modern amenities and then hide the 30 year old bathtub/shower or install new flooring and paint to cover up the cat urine smell in the hallways.

When we entered our room it was hot, which I explained away by telling myself that the Covid-19 stay at home order had just recently been lifted and they were trying to save money, I turned down the thermostat. We set down our things and decided that we'd go eat dinner now and come back to a nice cool room. When we returned the temperature had not changed. I called the front desk and was informed that "maintenance staff has left for the day and won't be back until morning". She asked me if the unit under the window was running, it was not, she told me I needed to go make sure some buttons were pressed and if that didn't work to call her back and she would try to come up and help. I was confused, there was a modern thermostat on the wall just inside the door. I had seen the big, bulky window unit and assumed it was just waiting to be removed as part of the updating and remodel of the hotel. I walked over to the air conditioner, as instructed, and tried pressing a few buttons, upon doing this the entire front panel came crashing to the floor. At that point I was done but my roommate came over to save the day. Apparently, there were some buttons on the plug (the one that plugs into the wall) that needed to be depressed in order for the A/C to work. About an hour later we realized that the room was not getting any cooler, I called the front desk again, speaking to the same woman as earlier she explained to me that the A/C is only active when you are moving around in your room. Apparently, there are motion sensors that detect "when you are in your room" but starting at 8 PM the sensors shut off and the A/C will run until morning; she did not specify what time morning is and I was too shocked to think of asking. I have never heard of anything like this, sensors in your room to keep the A/C running?! It finally cooled off

My roommates bed squeaked as if she were not alone in it, if you know what I mean. My mattress was lopsided and it felt as if I might roll across it. Needless to say, we did not sleep.

Due to our lack of sleep, we were in time for breakfast. Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy, freshly made waffles, cereal, milk, yogurt, toast and bagels. Everything was already set out and people were coming and going filling their plates and enjoying the morning meal. I was finally starting to relax, knowing that we would be leaving soon and I could sleep in my own bed tonight. Then I saw my roommates eyes twitch and her mouth started to fall open, I turned to watch as the woman that had been preparing our food walked out from the kitchen with another dish of gravy. The problem: she had NO gloves, No face mask and No hairnet on. The staff at the front desk and the cleaning crew had been wearing masks the entire time we had been there and now to see the woman that was touching, preparing our food with NO PROTECTIVE GEAR on at all. At that point we got up and started clearing our table only to see the woman coming from the back again, this time with her hands grasping a large handful or plastic forks and we watched as she showed them into a utensil holder.

With that, we returned to our room, packed up our things and went to check out. While checking out we were asked how our stay was, we were both speechless. Then a man, looking rather managerial, came over and asked the same question. Finally, I spoke up and began telling him about breakfast. He stood there listening, he nodded his head slightly and said that he would check on that situation. No apology, no outrage at the carelessness of staff just stoicism. With that, we left and will never,...

There were german roaches everywhere, which like to hitch a ride with you back to your place in your clothes, luggage, and vehicle and infest your home. This type of roach is extremely difficult to get rid of once they have infested. We had to go through all luggage and our vehicle with bug spray making sure there were none left before even entering our home/garage. The rooms not only have roaches but they also have a lot of mold and mildew everywhere. There's evidence of flooding or major leak at some point in time and they tried to cover it up with a very poor "remodel/renovation" which apparently means to cover it up and hide all of the issues without actually fixing them. There was flooding in the parking lot, this was before the hurricane, I can't imagine what it looks like now. The parking lot also had a huge sink hole that caved in with caution tape around it. There are rust stains running down the outside of the building from each room, is it the a/c units or is it evidence of an even bigger issue? Why haven't they cleaned or painted over the stains? Do they not care about the appearance or upkeep of the property? It is very humid in the rooms with a very strong musty moldy smell. The cleaning staff must be on vacation because these rooms look like no one has thoroughly cleaned them in quite some time and the stained dirty sheets included hair from I'm guessing the previous guest. It seems like they didn't bother replacing the sheets after the last guests at all, they just made the bed. The management was so rude that we drove to Walmart and bought bedding instead of asking them for new linens just so we didn't have to deal with their condescending attitudes. How clean would the linens have been anyway, we couldn't trust it. This is what we had to go through just to sleep and not have to worry where our sheets had been or if they had been cleaned at all. A lot of the fixtures are hanging out of the walls or are poorly repaired with large gobs of caulk. There are rust spots on ceiling. There are stains in shower and on walls. We felt the need to wear shower shoes due to the disgusting feel of the shower floor as well as the room floor. We did not feel comfortable being without shoes anywhere in this room. We tried to reduce the moldy smell and moist feel in the room by running the a/c but it turns out that this actually made it worse due to the even stronger mold smell coming from the a/c unit itself. They did have a Keurig coffee maker in the room, which we were happy about until we went to use it, disgusting and filthy. To top it all off, the general manager Tammie and the assistant manager Norma have no business being in this industry. They are extremely rude, condescending, arrogant, and incompetent. We should've paid closer attention to what other reviews wrote about the management. It looks as though we are not the only guests having these issues. If the hotel is going to be this bad, they should at least hire better, more pleasant management to maybe soften the blow at least a little bit. Instead, they give you a horrible room then top it off with management that shows you how much you really do not matter to them. I guess if I were a good hotel manager, I wouldn't want to work at a disgusting hotel like this either. I guess the owners have to take what they can get, what a shame. If we could do this again I would've looked that the negative reviews, trusted them, and stayed elsewhere. Never...

When we checked in at HOM, it was around 10:30PM. The stay was from Friday to Sunday. When we checked into out room, within 5 min of unpacking our belongings, we saw one massive cockroach run across the table and two baby ones run under the dresser with the fridge. We went to the front desk and asked for another room and we slept there. Saturday evening came around and as we settled back into the room we again saw one massive cockroach run across the floor and one small one by the bathroom sink. We than went to the front desk, at this point extremely concerned, frustrated, and scared because now we had reason to believe we were sleeping in a room (remember we had already slept in it the first night after switching rooms) with a cockroach infestation. This is where the experience went from bad to just sheer frustration.

It was late at night and at the front desk was only a single gentleman by the name of Ben (working night shift of 4/20 and no guarantee he didn't give me a fake name). He was incredibly dismissive and rude about the situation. I am not saying he cursed me out and yelled at me but his demeanor and options made it clear he did not care at all. His exact offer was the following.

Offer: Change rooms - we were weary of this as the first two rooms were cockroach infested. He can refund us for our stay but we had to leave right than and there. It was around midnight by the time we got to this point in the conversation.

We ended up going with option 1 because it was too late to try and find another hotel. Even if we did, we would have to repack the car and move everything to a whole new hotel.

The second option is just wrong. At that point, how can anyone be expected to find another place on that short notice? In addition, if the hotel itself has cockroach infested rooms, is it the customer that has to pay the price of the hotel not keeping their end of the bargain by not having roaches? When I tried to explain to him that option 2 is ridiculous, he told me since I was going to talk to corporate he wasn't going to say anything else on the matter. Than he went on to tell me that this location was going to be bought out by another chain other than wyndham, which to me was a crystal clear message of "go ahead and call corporate my boss and I don't care since we are leaving soon anyway".

Also when we changed rooms the first time, an employee followed us back to the room to see if the room was in "sellable" condition after what we said. I don't know what they did with the room, but it was greatly concerning that this business might have been engaging in selling rooms that needed work. The rooms also had a musty odd smell and they said it was because house keeping cleaned with vinengar. But the third room we were in didn't have that smell at all. Both nights we slept in extreme discomfort from the customer service experience and from the fear of roaches (which we were right in that the second room we stayed in had them and the third room probably had them too, we just never saw them).

I would have taken the offer of a refund (as that is the right thing for the business to offer for such a disgusting set of rooms) if they would have let us sleep the night and leave in the morning. I will be reaching out to Wyndham corporate not only to get a full refund, but report this location for it's very concerning and sketchy...