SpringHill Suites Birmingham Downtown at UAB

The elevator broke on our last day, so my mom, my aunt, and I had to carry our luggage up and down four flights of stairs twice. They're both in their 70s. Housekeeping also never came during our three-night stay to tidy the room or replace towels, and our trash was emptied only once. The toilet gave us trouble on the second night. I called the desk twice, and each time they said maintenance was on the way, but nobody came. It ran all night. The next morning I told a visiting sales manager, who said she'd send someone. A worker came and stopped the running, but that evening it overflowed. Maintenance came faster this time and said the valve was bad and the earlier worker should have caught it. The replacement valve he tried first was faulty too, so he had to go find another. After it was finally fixed, I had to clean and disinfect the bathroom myself because of the mess. We picked this hotel because it was close to UAB, where my dad was having surgery. The stay was disappointing.

The front desk was great, and the bed was clean. The rest was just okay, especially compared with the nicer Marriotts I'm used to. The ironing board was broken, and the shower had only half a door, so a five-minute shower took two floor towels. The parking garage is shared and expensive unless you bring your ticket in. The elevators were out, but nobody seemed to know; I waited more than five minutes before taking the stairs, twice.

We usually like staying at Marriott, but if we come back to Birmingham, it won't be the Springhill Suites. The rooms were very poorly cleaned and maintained. The first one smelled like smoke. In the second, there was a fake fingernail on the floor and hair all over the bathtub. The third had no trash can, and the area under the mattress was extremely dirty. The front desk service was great at check-in, and they did try to find us a suitable room.

The room was quiet, and having a continental breakfast and a parking garage next door were useful. But the lighting was confusing: we couldn't find a switch, and the front desk explained that the vanity mirror lights were the room lights and took a minute to come on. There were lamps too. Water pooled outside the shower and made the floor hazardous, and the scents in the elevator and room were both strong and neither pleasant nor alike. As for breakfast, they had it. I've stayed somewhere worse, but this place needs work. Fortunately, we only booked one night.