America’s Best Value Inn

My daughter and I stayed in this hotel last night. It was disgusting. The smell was so foul, reeking of mildew and a terrible musty smell. I will NEVER stay here again. When I booked it was under baymont inns which I have never had any problems with. It was actually hard to sleep because the smell was so horrific.

Dirty, stained carpet, bathtub and sheets. Chipping paint on walls. Spiders and cigarette odor throughout the entire place. I think people live here. This place is a dump and definitely not worth 130 a night. I’m sure the price was exaggerated by the graduation at ISU but this place isn’t even worth 59 a night. Staff was nice.

Has an indoor pool, very clean, friendly people, and nice breakfast, good coffee. Room is comfortable, clean. We had a great stay and didn’t gouge our wallet.

2.5 for what it is. A $ 50 hotel stay in the middle of nowhere. Pretty old hotel with very little amenities, but very nice desk service and a solid breakfast. I wish they’d have hard boiled eggs or other protein options, but milk and cereal were fine.
Make sure you check your bathroom for cleanliness as we discovered a HUGE wad of hair by the bathtub drain. We complained and got $ 10 off our bill, hence the third star.

I included too many photos so the system has listed the review multiple times with different pictures. Either check both reviews or go through the full photo bar for the entire story. Thanks.
I knew this hotel didn’t have great ratings but it was a tight weekend for events in town and I didn’t have a lot of options. I chose poorly. I figured a $ 50 room would be better than a Motel 6, right? Nope. Much much worse.
I’ve got a LOT to list here and a bunch of photos. But I’ll start with the thing that upset me the most. Building security. At 2am on a Saturday night every exterior door in the building is unlocked and there wasn’t anyone available at the front desk. Anyone could wander in the building and do whatever they’d want. Signage on exterior doors other than the main entrance state doors are locked from 11pm to 5am. Nope, didn’t happen. What happens on a Saturday night is college kids wandering the halls and in and out doors and a drunk guy crashing his car outside and then wandering wherever he felt like.
I understand that in an old hotel like this that some things won’t be perfect. But how long should you need to run the hot water before it gets even warm? Minutes went by and it was only warm, no «hot» water ever showed up. End result was not being able to take a shower.
The website and a huge banner outside say they have a heated indoor pool. Nope. They have a broken pool and may be repaired and reopened in the future.
Free continental breakfast? Well, kind of. If an off brand two week old preservative filled Danish and tiny bottle of juice is what will work for you then good. Possibly I’ve become spoiled by most hotels offering a bit more than flavorless preservatives for breakfast but this place could at least clearly publish what you will get.
The bead spread had holes in it and a small rip. this could pass as acceptable at a value hotel such as this but when you add in missing grout on the floor of the bathroom, a square foot a carpet replaced in the main path in the room with a section that is the same print but sideways and all frayed, broken handles on the dresser, gaps in the wall by the air conditioner, stains spattered on the wall, and spider webs in the corners of the ceiling, you have bypassed value and jumped right in to disgusting.
The parking lot is fairly messy with rubbish blowing around and that could have just blown in that day. What suggested to me they didn’t care much about their parking lot was the giant holes that formed over the winter or ever earlier.
Some walls inside the hallway had extensive cracks. In some cases this was occurring under wallpaper and in other places the wallpaper was pealing off the wall.
They have a nice display case in the lobby full of ISU stuff. Six shelves of buttons, cup holders, photos, pompoms, pens, game tickets and other cool things. It’s great they support one of the local schools but with two community colleges and and another major university in town I bet the events at those schools bring in tourists as well and a shelf of things from the other places would be nice. Now my issue with the display case has no bearing on this hotel getting one star, they gave me lots of other more important reasons. Just thought while I was sharing everything I observed that I’d toss that one in too.
I happened to witness the change of shifts at 7am Sunday morning while the night clerk (who was missing earlier when I was looking for him at 2am) was leaving and the son of the owner was coming in to run the desk. No mention of the drunk guy car accident that happened at 4:38am, no mention of kids running the halls, no mention of anything except «Another quiet night» and out the door the night desk clerk went.
I don’t believe I’ll ever return to this hotel (and I’ll be back in town next weekend too) so I won’t see if these details I’ve shared cause any changes but I will be checking the reviews here and hope to see they do care and take some action.

I feel I got what I paid for, nothing fancy. Pretty basic, not the cleanest. Not the most maintained. I’m a traveling business guy. The 2 things that upset me: Internet/​breakfast. I’m beyond easy going when it comes to a service. I thought everything was acceptable for the price (besides internet and breakfast).

Decent price, in need of some upgrades. Breakfast spread was fine but our room was damp, carpet felt almost wet and beds felt damp. Carpet stains, rust in bathroom.

I didn’t experience any of the problems that others have experienced here. This is a slightly older hotel, and since it’s in a college town, I suspect it gets rough treatment on football weekends. Nonetheless the hotel is clean and comfortable. There were no problems with my room. The lobby is a little dark and dreary, at least on an overcast early fall morning. The free breakfast was suitable, but if you want more, there are a couple of places within walking distance. There was almost no one here on a Thursday night, so the place was almost morbidly quiet. The pool is small, more for kids than swimmers. I scoped out other local hotels and found them to be – ahem — abnormally pricey for this area ($ 150 for a weeknight room in Normal? You’re kidding. I can get cheaper rooms in the Loop.). If all you want is a Normal place to sleep and shower, stay here and pocket the sixty bucks you’ll save.

Dirty! Peeling wallpaper, old icky carpet, stains on both bedspreads that might have been chocolate, food on the wall, red blotches on the bath mat that looked like it hadn’t been washed… Ewww!
This is not a Best Western and when we called ahead for reservations while on the road (we got the address and phone number off our GPS) they didn’t mention it. We were looking for the Best Western sign and thought we were lost!
Breakfast was bagel or toast. No fruit, no hard boiled eggs, and the worst watery coffee.
We should’ve kept driving!

This used to be a Best Western but sometime between August and November 2011 it changed to an America’s Best Inn (and never told customers with reservations about the change!) The hotel has gone down hill very quickly since changing hands. As a (now former) ISU student, my family has come down to visit me multiple times throughout the past 4 years and we’ve always stayed at this Best Western. The last time before last night/​tonight that I stayed here was in November of 2010, when it was still that Best Western.
Anyway, we all loaded up and 14 of us (5 rooms) made a trip down to ISU for the graduation ceremony. Last night, my mom and myself stayed in one room and my aunt in another. My aunt had to switch rooms because her first room REEKED of cigarettes, granted it WAS a smoking room, but it smelled like someone had just smoked about 30 packs in there and then left the cigarettes in the ashtray while they made a run to pick up more cigarettes. The bed was dingy– a King size but it sank heavily in the middle. Thankfully, my aunt asked for another room that was Non-​Smoking and just did her business outside.
Now on to our room– old shampoo bottles still left in the shower and potato chip crumbs in the bed (EW!). Cobwebs on the ceiling and every corner of the room, a spider in the hallway outside our door, and our shower flooded. My aunt’s toliet and a hallway toilet both had POO in them… like…someone forgot to flush poo. Sorry to be gross but I think that says a lot about what we were dealing with here if the maids can’t flush a toilet. We complained at the front desk in the morning and the man working said he would make sure the maids cleaned better. So far so good tonight.
Now on to the very best part! My aunt’s car got hit by someone in the parking lot– and she was parked RIGHT by the window facing the front desk. The person left a HUGE dent and ran. It had to have made a loud noise and not to mention that the person who hit her car had to have been in the Handicap spot immediately next to my aunt’s car. Kind of narrows down the suspects and you’d think maybe the front desk would have seen/​heard something, no? No, they didn’t. No cameras in the parking lot. Couldn’t tell us if anyone had stayed there who was utilizing the handicap spot. Didn’t even offer to call the police for us when we brought it to their attention. We had to come back ask them to. That shouldn’t happen.
Oh, and then of course there was the matter of the seedy homeless man wandering the property. The desk clerks were I think trying to be nice to him and letting him make phone calls, ordered a pizza, and letting him hang out in the lobby. However, he would periodically just wander the parking lot and stare in to cars. It was really bizarre. We almost called the police again.
All I have to say is thank goodness I’m done with ISU and we won’t be needing to utilize this shady hotel property ANYMORE!
But props to John the desk guy! You were pretty cool and helpful! We liked you. Just not the other guy who didn’t offer to call the police for us.