Travelodge by Wyndham Mesa

I needed an inexpensive, clean room for about six hours on a business trip to Mesa, and this place worked well for that. I’d booked before reading the reviews and was in a hurry, so I gave it a try. It turned out better than I expected. The room and bed were clean, with none of the cigarette burns people had mentioned. The bathroom had just been repainted. There wasn’t a bathtub, but that didn’t matter to me since I never use hotel tubs anyway, even after staying in plenty of hotels in Asia, Europe, the US, and Canada, from three to five stars. The hot water got so hot I nearly had to turn it off, and the AC worked well enough to get so cold that I switched it off. The staff member wasn’t rude or especially polite, just there to do his job. I told him I had a reservation, handed over my card, and that was about it. We spoke maybe two words, which was fine since I was tired and didn’t come to chat. I don’t know what more people expected from him. The pool was there, and that was good enough for me. How many people use a motel pool, anyway? I didn’t even use the beach at Mandalay Bay in Vegas, let alone a little pool like this.

We left early the morning after our first night of a two-day stay because the room was dirty and the shower floor was sickening. When we came back around 4:20, the room still hadn’t been cleaned. The towels and shower mat were on the floor, and the bed hadn’t been made. The office said they couldn’t do anything. They said they would process a refund when we asked, but they never did. We filed a complaint with the credit card company, and the hotel fought it. Don’t stay there.

The room was clean and the staff were friendly. They even let me stay an extra 30 minutes so I could wake up and get ready. A great start, and I’ll stay again.

The manager handed me cleaner and a rag and told me to do the cleaning myself. This was easily the worst Travel Lodge I’ve stayed in, and I’d never return. There was blood and snot on the walls and near the toilet. The shower smelled like urine and had mold and hair left by the previous guest. The sheets weren’t clean, and the pillows were stained and smelled funky. The dresser and remote had sticky stuff on them, the room smelled of cigarettes, and there was white stuff on the chair. Just disgusting.