Comfort Inn & Suites Salem Northeast — Hotel in Salem

Good Points: I was really impressed with the quality of the room for the price on this location. I ended up having to book this room for a large group last minute due to my VRBO cancelling on me. Not only was the price much better, but this hotel has a nice indoor pool and hot tub. Both were SUPER clean! I am a bit of a clean freak so that was great. The hot tub is large and roomy so even with other people in it I didn't feel crowded. The hotel itself is nice and more modern and everything was clean. The room was spacious, clean, nicely decorated, and the beds very comfortable with good pillows and the air conditioner worked great. I was also able to get an early check in, which was great. The breakfast was good with the waffles that my kids loved and hot eggs and sausage which I enjoyed because I have to eat gluten free. This hotel is right next to an on/off ramp in Salem so very easy to access which I loved! ||||But it was the front desk staff that really shine! The lady who booked me (I called the hotel direct and did not use an online booking site) was so sweet and friendly and I met her again when we checked in. She was really great and remembered me and asked about my kids who had just graduated. We were there for a trip as a present for graduating high school. I was super impressed with her! The other staff who were front desk were also really friendly and helpful. I am planning on staying here again in the future!||||The Not so Good: For some reason my room window didn't have full curtains so at night with the lights on anyone could see in, which for me was weird and uncomfortable. I think I watched too many Scream movies as a teenager! Second the tv remote in the room didn't work. It turned the tv on but wouldn't switch the channels. Not a big deal, I could have called front desk and gotten a working one in seconds I'm sure, but I was too tired and just streamed on my laptop as I don't really like tv anyways.||||FYI: I've worked both Front Desk and Housekeeping in the past and am always impressed with great service, especially in this economy! I know how hard both jobs are! Tip your housekeeper's people! They clean up the most horrific nasty stuff for...

Our stay started out really nice because the front desk night person was very pleasant and so was the day time attendant, but things took a turn for the worse. I asked when the Pool opened and they said 9 am. When we got into our room, I noticed that the carpets were very stained and the hallways smelled like body odor. We also found some black hair all over our room that was not ours. It was like they did not vacuum. And for $150 a night, I felt like there should not be a previous guests hair in our room, still. My daughter went to use a towel and a bunch of black hair fell out of the towel . We were all pretty grossed out by this and my husband went down to get more towels without hair in them. Since it was our first stay at a hotel as a family, we planned to get up have breakfast and then go swimming. We got our bathing suits on and headed to the pool. There was a sign on the door that said that the pool was closed for maintenance, it was after 9 a.m.. so I use my key card and walked in, the maintenance person said the pool was closed and that he was maintaining it. I then said to him that the pool was supposed to be open at 9 a.m. so that we could swim, that my children were really looking forward to swimming. He then rudely said that he was sorry but there was nothing you could do he had to put chemicals in the pool. My kids were super sad so I went straight to the front desk and let them know that the maintenance person was not very kind and that we were told false information. The breakfast was also lame...it was not a warm buffet, but cold food in a bag. We are incredibly disappointed in our stay at this Comfort Inn & Suites, I left a complaint with the front desk, and they are supposed to be compensating us in some way. They said they would email me, which is also unprofessional,...

The good: The service was friendly; check-out was fairly quick and easy. I was able to get a last minute reservation, despite several conferences being in town. It had a decent TV, and plenty of plug-ins for chargers, laptops and whatever else. Internet WiFi was by far the BEST connection I've ever had in a hotel.

The so-so: It's sandwiched between the highway and a major road, so bring a white-noise machine or keep the fan on if you want to sleep. That said, I only heard minor stomping upstairs (always a risk in any hotel when staying anywhere other than top floor), so the walls and floors aren't paper thin or anything. Check in took a while, because there was one person at the desk and people with issues in front of me.

The ugly: My room smelled like a high school football team locker room just after the big game with three overtimes. No joke. I believe it was room 219. Seriously, it was almost unbearable. I was so exhausted from my day, however, that I didn't want to try bothering with moving, nor did I want to have to wait again to do so. It took me long enough to get the room I did. Well, I should have. Opening the window did nothing, spraying cologne was futile, and there was no going nose blind to this odor. I didn't feel comfortable sleeping under the covers, because who knows if the sheets were clean with that horrible smell, so I just collapsed on top of them. I hate to tank the review just for this. After all, I didn't ask to move. But should I even have to? The rest of the place might be fine. But that and the WiFi are the reasons I gave it three stars over one or two. That said, even the fastest Internet in the world would not be worth that smell. It made the place...