La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Holbrook Petrified Forest — Hotel in Holbrook

I parked at 7pm. 4 guests in front of me in line to check in. The front desk agent complained to Guest 1 about 3rd party travel agents, answered the phone, then made a different guest who cut the line a new room key. She said they've been rebooting their system all day, keys & wifi for guests weren't working. Guest 2 got told they've been full every night, & in fact were double-booked for rooms. Guest 3 tried to make a res for that night, he was told that there were no rooms & left unhappy, as did Guest 4. Both older gentlemen, left saying they wouldn't have waited had they known there were no rooms. Finally my turn. She couldn't find my reservation, which I pulled up on my phone. I booked direct on 9/3 for a 1 night stay on 10/8. This hotel had sent automated reminders 2 days prior, 1 day prior, & the morning of. I filled in the pre-check-in info w/my driver's license, credit card, & what make/model/license plate of vehicle I'd be arriving in, earlier in the day, thinking they'd be redy for us. Why do I say 'us'? I'm a family of 4. Me, husband, & 2 kids under 10. The kids by now had been waiting in the car w/their dad for 30 min after a very long day. She eventually found me & had to reboot again. She went into the back office. It was only after she came back I found out she was 'checking on a room for me' (calling her mgr for help). She came back & said, very clear in language that no one could confuse, that there was already another guest in my room. She asked if 1 king bed would be acceptable. I looked at her like she had 3 heads. NO, I'm here with a party of 4. The 2 adults/2 kids/2 queen beds was listed in the res. More talking to the mgr on the phone. She told me she was "going to work something out". Future tense. Back to the back office. I took out my phone & googled hotels. Quality Inn was down the street. I called & confirmed they had a room w/2 queens, wifi, & breakfast for $91, which at this point sounded amazing after hearing my $192 room at LaQuinta had been given to someone else. 3 more women came in. I told them frankly to sit & relax. They asked if we needed to ring a bell, since there was no one up front. I told them the whole story. She returned from the back office, still vaguely promising a future solution. I told her that wasn't ok. I didn’t have time to hope it might be ok in who knows how long. I wanted something in writing confirming that I'd arrived & was unable to stay at the hotel. My expectation was a full refund / zero charges, since the hotel was at fault & I was there in good faith. She again had her mgr on the phone, who told her to print a BLANK invoice as proof of cancelation. Not helpful. The hotel didn't accept blame or even acknowledge that I'd arrived & attempted to check in. NOR did it say I was being charged $0. It just had my name, meaning nothing had been charged YET. She then hand wrote "guest arrived, and wanted to cancel" which could be interpreted as ME canceling within the 24hrs' notice... that is absolutely not what happened here. I took the paper & wrote a quick account of the facts. I'd arrived to check-in & the hotel had given my room to another guest. The hotel failed here & left me no choice. The hotel admitted fault verbally then refused to note in writing that I left specifically because my room had been given away. There were 3 witnesses in the lobby. It was clear the front desk thought she was saving face somehow. I left with the paper to at least have SOMETHING. I was checked in & already in a room at the Quality Inn up the street in less than 10 min. All told, 90 min after I set foot in the LaQuinta to check-in to the room I'd reserved over a month ago, & confirmed that very morning. I'm sure no one reading this will be shocked to hear I got charged for the room at LaQuinta, & it took SO much time after to sort out. I was left stranded in the middle of nowhere w/my kids. What if I couldn't find another room?

No one else should have to deal with this. Avoid this hotel in the middle of nowhere AT ALL COSTS, or you'll have...

Couldn’t even stay here… we booked a one night stay a couple weeks in advance as we are moving across the country, towing a 24’ trailer with our belongings. I called the morning of our arrival to see if we might be able to check in about an hour early. I was told no, they were not offering any early check-ins. No asking about our room type or reservation, just a flat out no. I thought, OK, I know things are tough and sometimes it’s just not possible to get rooms turned around, but most of the other places we have stayed will at least make an effort or apologize for not being able to accommodate… So when we arrived early, we decided to sit in the truck for a while until check in time. The parking lot was completely empty. We parked along the front (as we have everywhere else we stayed), occupying with the truck and trailer maybe 6 or 7 parking spaces. After about 5 minutes or so, a woman stormed out of the hotel and came over to the truck and asked if we were guests there in a rather hostile tone. I tried to explain that we were just waiting for check in time. She did not wait for me to finish, cut me off and said “you can’t park there.” She indicated we would have to park in the gravel parking lot next door. We tried to pull into the gravel parking lot but (as it was large loose stone, not compacted) found that if we stopped on it, we would end up stuck. My husband went to talk to her to see if there were any other options. She told him to park in the gravel or we could not stay there. He came back out to tell me, and I found another hotel with availability right down the road. I then went inside to confirm there were no other options for parking, and if not, then I would cancel our reservation. She was immediately hostile before I could get a word out and told me we should find somewhere else to stay. She said “the next person will tell you the same thing” and that she saw people park there all the time. Perhaps they did not have 10,000-lb trailers towed by a rear wheel drive cargo van. She kept going on, unapologetic and rude, while she cancelled our reservation. Apparently it’s too much of an inconvenience to have people stay there. Her attitude was what really got me. I thought this was supposed to be the hospitality industry. I wouldn’t want to stay in a place that treats guests so rudely, especially so unprovoked. My advice? Choose another place to stay. We did, less than a mile down the road, and the service was much nicer. I’ll likely never stay in another...

For my first stay here, I called to make sure that my small 2 dogs and 3 small birds would be allowed. They said yes and that the pet policy was that the first 2 pets are free and $30 for each additional pet, totaling $90. I agreed to it. When the clerk saw that our birds were tiny he charged only $30 for the pet fee which was a nice bonus.

Since our stay was pleasant, I booked again (a week early), but I did it online rather than called. In the notes, I said I preferred to be in a room away from other guests because of my 2 dogs, 3 birds.

The day of my reservation, at 3 pm, I received a voicemail from La Quinta that said "I regret to inform you that the pet policy is only 2 per room." This confused me as this is not the pet policy. Why was I able to stay 2 weeks earlier with my pets? And why inform me of a "new" pet policy the day of my reservation rather than when I had booked my reservation? I called back and the desk clerk said she would call the manager and say that since I had stayed earlier with pets, would it be allowed this time around.

While I waited for a call back, my husband and I stressed about what we'd do if they cancelled our reservation. I looked up back up hotels and we weighed if we could just keep driving to our destination.

The clerk called us back and told us that the manager said she would allow the extra pets as long as we paid for $30 for each-- which is the pet policy I had known about!

I think the manager doesn't really understand the hotel's pet policy or maybe she was trying to get us to cancel the reservation (the hotel had no vacancies that day). Either way, the voicemail and the back and forth calls made us feel unwelcome and not excited about our stay.

On a positive note, the beds are comfortable and the room is an acceptable level of cleanliness. Unfortunately, the morning of our stay we were woken up by a kid constantly running/stomping above us (it went on from 6 AM- 7:30 AM). Although it wasn't the hotel's fault and the clerk gave them a courtesy call after we complained, I will not book a stay here again...