Holiday Inn Express Hotels in Tacoma

Let me start by saying I’m going into this review a little miffed. In my 40+ years of traveling, I’ve never had a hotel or motel tell me I can’t use my reward points. But in this case, I was told the points can only be used for “Standard Rooms” and all their standard rooms were booked. So I went ahead and paid for a … non-standard room???. Well, I got to my room and guess what - it was just a standard motel room. There was absolutely nothing special or deficient with this room. With that said and out of the way, here are the positive aspects of my stay. The facility is somewhat new and it was clean (the bleach smell hung heavy in the air). The staff was courteous, but not necessarily friendly. The bed was medium firm and there were plenty of pillows. The free breakfast was pretty good. Within 150 feet from the hotel there were two restaurant … the food at the Pho restaurant was really good. Now for some downsides … (1) for all you light sleepers, this was a noisy motel. Even though we were in a room on the backside of the motel facing an empty lot, we could still hear the nearby traffic noise. Additionally, we could hear guests talking in their room and hallway. We could also hear the footsteps from the floor above us. (2) this motel is located in a not so nice location of Tacoma … they even lock the front lobby doors after certain hours, so you need to use your room key card to enter the lobby and to operate the elevator. Connected to the noise issue … I did hear a couple of gun shots at about 3 AM.