Howard Johnson by Wyndham Downtown Kamloops

I was in town for a hospital appointment, so the location worked perfectly. My room was clean and smelled fresh, and it was fine for what I paid. The lady at the desk was great. I accidentally knocked my phone off and missed my wake-up call, but she came out in the cold and knocked on my door.

The hotel was so quiet at night that we slept really well, and we enjoyed the location. We stayed one night with our two dogs. When we arrived around 4:30 pm on Sunday, December 14th, the young woman at reception welcomed us with a big smile. I wish I remembered her name. Check-in was quick, and she showed us to our room. The room was clean and presentable, the heating worked, and everything in the bathroom was fine. Breakfast at 8 am had waffles, coffee, tea, milk, butter, jam, fruit, toast, cereal, and yogurt. Check-out was easy too. My only complaint is that the internet would stop working for a few minutes.

The rooms were dirty, the amenities felt like a gamble, and after they had our money there seemed to be no concern for us as guests. Our room had no hot water in the shower. When we reported it, the front desk said they’d contact the manager and call us about a partial refund to the card on file. I called several times over the next week and nobody got back to me. Eventually another staff member said we had to be there in person to get a refund. That hadn’t been mentioned when we first raised the problem, so we never got the partial refund we were promised. We also asked Wyndham for help, but the motel manager denied the request without explaining why, and I had to follow up with the hotel. We thought this would be fine for a quick overnight stop on a road trip. It was a huge mistake. I wouldn’t recommend staying here.

The sheets were clean, the mattress was comfortable enough, and the free breakfast was pretty good. The rest of the room was disappointing. It was very old and heavily sprayed with air freshener, apparently to cover years of indoor smoking back in the 80s. The paint, flooring, and trim were well overdue for replacement. Dirt was caked into grooves on the desk and nightstand, which clearly hadn’t been deep cleaned. The bathroom smelled strongly of urine. There was a lot of mildew along the bottom of the shower and around the toilet, plus a mold spot on the fan and leftover hairs on the shower wall. There was only one outlet for charging devices, down by the foot of a bed and nowhere near the nightstand. Given the Wyndham name, I’d expected a somewhat decent stay for the price.