Honor Motel — Hotel in Homestead Township

Update to your comments: I was not offered another room. Your husband mentioned trying to figure out how I could relock once I got in - it made it sound like there were no more rooms available.

You did tell me I should have emails from hotels.com saying it was declined. I checked while on the phone with you. No emails except the one where you emailed before I arrived. Also, the hotels.com app was on and no alerts.

This all could be a comedy of errors. But the reality is that room 100% smelled like old musty smoke. And I just assumed they all smelled that way because it is all clearly no smoking and an old motel that's been semi renovated. I just felt stuck. I paid for the room and knew there was no refund. You can see from another reviewer they say musty. Fortunately, for you guys, people think that odor is quaint. 🤷‍♀️

The owner is very nice and you get an email reminding you of the last day to cancel before you lose your booking fee. She called me that day to ask when I'd be checking in and that my card didn't work when it was ran. That was odd but okay, maybe an expired card so she was cool with me calling later as I was driving up there.

The details to get there are good and to the room (or how to get your keys after hours). But my room? I was slapped in the face of that musty, old cigarette smell. I know that smell. There was a dehumidifier running so you know the room is in a damp area. But that smell is likely just years of the motel allowing smoking until they took over - Kilz only covers so much especially when the air is damp. I did not want to be in the room but only had to sleep so I actually did my exercises outside.

Then after I walked back from dinner I could not get back into my room. I had a hard time getting in initially but did the whole grab the knob, pull forward and try turning the key as you pull up and pull down. This is usually a sign a door has swollen - again, damp room. So I texted and she gave me the same advice. I literally could not turn the key. Then her husband drove over right away which was great and he was going to get a new key - I said a new key won't matter, this door has swollen. Guess what? The new key did not matter! He had to wrestle with it and got me in but then was concerned about how I would lock it. I told him it'd be fine as I could pull the door up on the inside and latch. It took me a minute and I got it, but was not going to leave again. Left the door unlocked in the morning.

But then when I went to leave a hotels.com review the next week, I saw my booking had been canceled. Well that stinks because I only booked to get the hotels.com points and then the extra 10% back Rakuten was offering thru a hotes.com booking. So I reached out to hotels.com and well nothing they could do, it was canceled.

I reached out to the owner and she said that's what she had to do because my card didn't work and she would look into it and get ahold of me the next day. She did not. I looked on hotels.com and my main card was an AMEX that was valid I use often. The three back up cards are all valid. Why did my card not work?!

She never got back to me so I followed up a few weeks later and there was nothing she could do - oh well. Okay, fine. But my speculation this was all to save some fees to hotels.com and AMEX which are typically higher. The only thing I can think of.

All that to say... the review would have been a 3 or 4 because of that room smell - it was clean though! Room 16. Maybe just the back one is like that. It's a small town. The grocery store closes at 6. You can walk to two restaurants and it's the closest to Sleeping Bear. I know I'll get banned as I've read from other reviews but I won't be back... if you need a place near Sleeping Bear, the rooms are clean, owners are nice... room may smell musty and you may lose out on a measly but significant to me $18...

Made my reservation a week and a half prior, but my reservation was lost. After driving 3 hours with my friend (who has just flown in from Toronto), we were informed that they "never saw our reservation" but then on immediately checking it was found. We were asked what can be done to correct this, we asked for a new hotel to be found a room bought. Due to the price of other hotels with availability, we were denied this as it was not "reasonable". Though the price was significantly higher, we did spend the money on travel (especially the flight from Canada) and all the time spent getting there. Overall just bad customer service and didn't even let me friend use the bathroom after all of this. Edit for comment: Check-in was from 3 to 9 PM...but others who showed up after we had (after the 9 PM time) got their rooms (we showed up at 9:46 according to Google). The words "Lost your reservations, this is the first time it's happened to me" was used. The attempt to find us a room was made slightly but told us anything, where there was availability, was "unreasonable" due to price. This whole situation is steamed from someone failing to check their Priceline reservations. Our room wasn't told to us that it was being forfeited due to being "late showing up", it's just an attempt to save face. First time hearing that. Again, the words used were "lost...

Decided at midnight that I was going to surprise my kids and bring them to Sleeping Bear Dunes in the morning. Got online; not very many hotel options available so last-minute on a holiday weekend (Memorial). Stumbled upon the Honor Motel in my search, read the good reviews, and decided to go for it! This was my first time ever staying in a motel, and it was a great experience! I was only looking for a decent place to lay our heads at night, as we would be out exploring all day. This was exactly what I was looking for. The location and price of the Honor Motel are both really great, and it was super clean! My daughter inspected even the window sills and said, “mom, this place is better than regular hotels!” The woman at the front desk was very nice, and to my surprise, someone cleaned the room while we were out! There was a small fridge and a microwave in the room too, which came in handy. My kids are both under 12, for your reference, and both said they want to go back and stay...