AL Birmingham The Wynfrey Hoover

[petrel800]

Date of stay - Nov 1-4, 2011

I arrived at The Wynfrey in Birmingham around 9PM locally. The hotel itself is attached to a large shopping mall and is surrounded by several other retail shopping centers. The hotel has about 14 stories, and the building is decent in it's appearence, but is showing some age. There is a Shula's Steakhouse in the lobby (I did not eat at the restaurant). Overall, the area was much like any other suburban area outside of any city in the USA.

The hotel does have a small amount of self park outside of the lobby enterence, however, a majority of the parking is for valet. There are 2 other levels of parking below the hotel in a parking deck. The hotel charges you $9 a night to park, you access and exit the lot with your room key.

The hotel front desk staff was very friendly, and I was checked in immediately, no mention of using a discounter to book the room. My room was on the 8th floor. The elevator and halls definitely have an "older hotel" feel to them. When I entered my room, the floors and bathroom were clean, and I was surprised by the area in the room. It was definitely a pretty decent sized hotel room. The bed was comfortable and I have no complaints there. The TV was just a regular old TV, and it had your standard hotel channels. Biggest complaint would be the furnature in the room. It was definitely old and was showing it's age. I do have to say, by the evening of the third night, I did begin to detect kind of a pet/urine odor coming from the corner of the room, but I can't verify if it was there all week, or just coming from a next door room. It did not overwhelm the room, you could just detect it when you were close to that corner of the hotel room.

I did use the fitness room each night, it had 2 treadmills and a few other machines. I asked the front desk if they had a deal with a local gym to workout, and was told they did not.

Overall, I would say, this hotel is nothing to get excited about, if you're just staying the night, it's not awful, but I was not overly impressed. It was kind of a joke that they were charging for parking where they were at, but that's the racket I guess. Place needs an update, again, not awful, just don't get wrapped up in their website thinking you are staying at something more than a low 3* hotel (I'd go more like 2.5 if it was my rating).