OYO 443 Crystal City Hotel

The room was spacious, the AC was cold, and the shower and toilet were good. But it smelled of smoke when we arrived. The smell faded for a while, then came back. I think staff may have been smoking on the stairs or nearby and the smoke somehow got into our room, though I'm not sure how. I understand we might not get a non-smoking room, but it shouldn't smell of smoke at check-in.

We booked and paid well in advance through a corporate travel agent, but when we arrived the hotel said they had our booking and no rooms available. They told us to get a refund through OYO. What nonsense. We were lucky to find an Airbnb at the last minute, paying first and claiming it back later, and then asked our travel agent to handle the refund directly with the hotel. This is exactly why I don't stay at OYO or budget hotels. I only trust chain hotels like Marriott Bonvoy, Accor, or IHG. Deserves no stars at all.

The front desk said we'd paid too little online for the room we had already booked and paid for through trip, and asked us for almost 50% more. The pictures were false, and the rooms were in terrible condition. There were moldy pillows, dusty shelves, cigarette marks on the bedsheets that made my skin itch, peeling paint on the walls, lots of insects, and wall plugs that had come out of the walls. The whole place felt eerie and horrifying. You get what you pay for. Stay somewhere else.

The foyer had very limited ventilation and smelled like there'd been a cigarette party. Customer service also gave us false information. We called to ask if the hotel had a ground-floor unit because we were traveling with an elderly person, and they said yes. It turned out they had no ground-floor units, and we couldn't cancel the booking with a full refund.