It seems in the Midwest and Florida at least, Super 8s (and Days Inns are a mixed bag, and TripAdvisor reviews reflect that. I’ve stayed at many, and a lot are nice, affordable places, but then there’s that one in Florida where they hadn’t cleaned the corners in years and my sister found a pube on her bed, the one in Chicago where we could see bedbugs crawling around when we first entered the room.
However, other areas of the country (like Viriginia and New Jersey) it seems the reviews are universally extremely negative. So are there parts of the country where you have to pay $100 a night for a Holiday Inn class to get a decent room. Does corporate know or care what their individual properties are doing? Do these places relay on a steady stream of people staying one night, who cares if they ever come back?
As you noticed yourself, these chains vary in relative value with some areas having a wider distribution and others having clusters of terrible reviews for almost everyone.
In the case of cheaper “highway exit” hostelries, IMO they DO depend mostly on people just stopping once while on the road, but even within one same metropolitan area quality can vary depending on location and clientele. Those on the exit to the industrial park with all the new tech companies will often be nicer than those on the exit that leads to the old freight docks and the strip joints. In some towns what you run into, as you noticed, is that the market offer is simply lousy to begin with, the mid-/upmarket brands can charge whatever they can get away with – or may not even find a local place that meets their branding standard at a given tier, and figure this town’s not worth expanding into on their own dime – and your weary road-tripper on a tight budget feels his only choice other than a cheap chain is the place where the Vice/Homicide squad have a permanent reserved parking spot.
Also there’s the branding/flagging policies of each group, that may be loose - Super 8 for instance were originally just a joint reservation group, so at the start they had little sway over the local owner-operators. There are brands/flags that will just give the local owner a minimal checklist of things to comply with – just in the sense they exist, not in the sense that they are that good – and as long as it is so they’ll rent you the brand and reservations system; others will demand quality compliance. Meanwhile the downmarket brands have tended to take over a lot of older motel properties in less-costly (but also, less productive) locations so they start from behind, so to speak.
One thing I would caution about: Bedbugs are not necessarily limited to dirty or poorly run hotels. They can show up in even the cleanest, fanciest hotels. I wish that I could have the peace of mind of knowing that I could avoid them just by staying in nicer places when I travel, but every time you stay at a hotel it’s a crap shoot.
Alternatively, it could be that different regions have different online reviewing cultures, and people in the Midwest are more likely to leave a review when they’ve had a positive experience, whereas people on the east coast review only when they’ve got a complaint? It’s been my experience that lots of hotels that are perfectly fine have at least one extremely negative review, and some have a string of them.
Hope this isn’t seen as a threadshit, but here’s my rules of thumb when I’m on the road, and I don’t have access to online hotel reviews. I generally avoid anyplace with:
They include anyplace with:
a number in its name. Super 8 or Motel 6 as a last resort, if it’s a new property. No oddball local chains with numbers ever, like “Value 7” or “Hotel 5”.
the words “value”, “budget”, “discount” or anything similar in its name.
the words “deluxe”, “luxury”, “executive” or anything similar in its name.
the words “travel”, “host” and “American” too, while we’re at it.
names with kitschy 1950s-style spelling (“Bel-Aire Mo-tel”, “Sleep-Tyte Inn”, etc)
signs that proclaim “AMERICAN OWNED”. There’s still a small number of independent motels that reek of curry, but now the vast majority of “Patel motels” are professionally managed branches of chains.
unironically retro information on the signs (“RCA COLOR TV”, “AIR CONDITIONING”, “Mastercharge, BankAmericard and Diner’s Club accepted”, etc.)
obviously debranded former chain hotels.
second floor galley/common balcony-style room access.
portable signs.
Days Inn or Clarion Inn branding. It’s like playing the lottery; sometimes they’re fantastic, other times you’d be better off in a hobo camp.
In my otherwise battered Rust Belt hometown, there’s a hotel/motel building boom that shows no signs of stopping. Occupancy rates are high throughout the year, thanks to growing tourism, cross-border shopping, an airport with cheap fares, professional sports events that draw thousands of out-of-town visitors, and the presence of many colleges and universities. It’s a hotelier’s market, and rates are about 50% to 100% higher than what one might find in a peer city in the Midwest, and high pet fees ($75 to $100) are the norm at the few properties that allow dogs. Reviews on sites like Trip Advisor tend to be mediocre or inconsistent, except for the high-end chain and boutique hotels downtown. When Canadians and Long Islanders are beating down the doors of a Super 8 at $95/night, you don’t have to try very hard to attract or keep guests.
The thing I don’t understand, is assuming they do care, ( which is one of the things I was wondering), is corporate really so dense they don’t read Tripadvisor? I can understand a bad review here and there; some people might never be satisfied unless they get Sheraton service at Super 8 prices, but when there’s 25 “terrible” reviews (with maybe a handful of “poor” or "average thrown in), but no “excellent” wouldn’t someone take notice?
Depending on the setup of the franchise, and I don’t know how Super 8 or Days’ are set up, the Franchising Entity may not have that much pull with the local franchisee/licensee unless they were willing to put up their own money or financially secure the local owner-op. In that case all they’ve got is the threat to de-flag when the contract goes up for renewal and often that is sort of automatic as long as the checklist of requirements is complied with.
I find the shittiest hotel in a huge cluster of hotels is almost always terrifying. Stayed at the Masters’ Inn once in Mount Pleasant right over the bridge from Charleston, in this huge knot of hotels and oh my god was it gross. The cleaning people came and left a NEW smell. Our neighbors in the next room had plastic chairs to sit out on their stoop every night. There was a really nasty hair scrunchie left on the bathroom doorknob. The smoke detector was hanging off the wall by a wire.
We only stayed there because our class was staying there for a conference and we didn’t want to be snobs and stay in the conference hotel instead.
I never stayed in a Super 8 motel. I have stayed in Motel 6 motels. The most I have to complain about them that they are always cold (air conditioning makes it that way) and the carpets are still wet from cleaning. But at least all the Motel 6 I have to are clean and bed are comfortable to sleep in.
If you want really bad motels, there are the ones where people live in them and usually drug dens. The curtains are usually in this one motel in the downtown where I live and people decorate their windows. The motel occupants sometimes have been known to go into the neighborhood nearby and steal people stuff. Also, it had been caught on fire once. I don’t know if it was an arson or not, but knowing how the occupants, I wouldn’t dobut if they were trying to cook meth and the room went aflame.
Another question, who exactly do Holiday Inns cater too? I always thought them as catering to business travelers due to their high prices, meeting rooms, and on-site resteraunts, but I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express on Marathon Key; it was filled with vacationers in shorts and tank tops, not businessment in suits, and Marathon Key would be a strange place to do business. Looking around, I see a number of Holiday Inn Expresses near but not right in obvious resort areas, like Pocomoke City, VA and Morehead City, NC.
And is there any real difference in who Holiday Inns vs Holiday Inn Expresses cater too? Or are they just different sizes in different locations, with the Expresses being smaller and in suburban locations and the “regular” having resteraunts and being in more urban locations.
Probably middle class vacationers who have a fat wallet, but not so fat that they can afford to stay at the Hiltons or Marriotts of the world.
My family stayed at one once during a vacation when we were a kid, but that was mainly because another family we were traveling with wanted to stay there. It was nice, but due to the high prices we never stayed at one again. My dad liked to pinch his pennies, and we usually stayed at Super 8s, Motel 6s and Days Inns when we traveled.