Homewood Suites by Hilton Lafayette, LA

Tennera at the front desk was incredibly kind and helpful when I tried to send my boyfriend a surprise birthday gift through DoorDash. He was staying here for a work trip, and she bagged everything up, made it look cute, and even wrote in the card for me. Absolutely amazing service.

Tennera B greeted us with a lovely smile, but the room and its supplies were a major disappointment. It was close to 80 degrees when we arrived, and getting it down to 70 took three hours. The two-bedroom suite had two bathrooms, and both toilets looked as if feces had been left in them. On closer inspection, I realized those marks were scratches from a metal cleaning brush. The kitchen sink was too small to wash anything large, and there were only salad plates, two salad forks, two knives, and a drinking glass with chips on the rim. The outlet in the living room was cracked and unusable. We found one pot caked with dried oatmeal and a tiny frying pan. After we told Tennera B, she searched for quite a while before bringing a pot big enough for spaghetti and a strainer in a smaller pot for sauce. We'd picked this room because the online pictures showed ceiling fans and easy chairs for reading. Those pictures were a lie. This is one of the worst Hilton properties I've stayed at, and I'm very disappointed. I hope Hilton sees this and the pictures and does its due diligence, including refunding some of what we paid. The irony is that I came with my husband, who is a lifetime Hilton diamond member.

The room looked nice and clean, and breakfast was basic but honestly not bad. Still, the place reeked of mold, and the health concern overshadowed everything. We'd chosen this hotel because other nearby places were full of mold and bad management, outdated properties, and similar problems, but this one was no better. At check-in, things moved fairly quickly. When we asked the manager whether the building had mold, she said they couldn't ensure that. Our floor smelled strongly of it as soon as we got there. I travel all over the South, and I haven't found mold like this in other Lafayette hotels. We tried several times to speak to the manager again. We were told she'd be available in the morning, then brushed off again the next morning, and never saw her. The basic breakfast gave me a chance to joke about boosting my immunity against the mold, but I'm unhappy with the stay and this is probably the last time I'll let myself book a hotel around here.

We really liked the location and enjoyed our room. It was a quiet, clean hotel with large rooms and kitchens. Hope to come back!