OYO Hotel Monroe LA I-20

A decade back, I was here for a work stay. Got the feeling the place might be haunted. If ghosts are around, you've got everything.

We used to stay here without trouble, which is why we came back. This time was awful. I booked two rooms weeks in advance, then called the front desk myself to confirm every detail: rooms beside each other, one smoking room with a king bed, one nonsmoking room with a queen, and one accessible room on the ground floor. I was repeatedly told they could do all of that. At check-in, the rooms were the opposite of what we had arranged. Both were upstairs and nonsmoking, each had a full bed instead of the reserved king and queen, and one had no fridge. My elderly mother can barely manage stairs without difficulty, so the missing accessible ground-floor room was a serious problem. When we couldn't get a working key for one room the first night, the desk person said they wouldn't let us back in if we went out and locked the door. Maintenance got the second room's key working the next morning, and handled it promptly once they were involved. The rooms themselves weren't terrible, but none of the promised arrangements had been honored. The desk staff's attitude when I raised this was nasty, and I left disgusted with the service. I would have canceled and gone elsewhere if the wrong rooms hadn't been discovered at such short notice. We won't stay here again, and I'll tell people to avoid it unless things improve. The front desk needs proper customer service training, or someone who cares enough to treat guests politely and do the job well. I hope someone responds and actually works on making this hotel what it used to be. There's a $100 deposit for incidental damage, and it can also be kept if you smoke in a nonsmoking room. Since I'd specifically reserved a smoking room and didn't get one, I decided to give up the deposit and smoke in my room anyway. This isn't a five-star place, and plenty of rooms have clearly been smoked in regardless of their designation. I wanted to avoid having to go outside to smoke, so I did what I'd planned to do.

The outside of the building looked nice and could have potential, but the room was disgusting. The carpet was badly stained, smelled awful, had freshener sprinkled over it, and looked like it hadn't been vacuumed in ages. There were spider webs in the corners, no liner in the trash can, and just a sheet and two pillows on the bed, no cover. The mirror, toilet, and floors were filthy. It looked as if the floors hadn't been swept or mopped for months, so we kept our shoes on. I felt just as dirty after showering as before, and the one towel provided was stained. There wasn't any toilet paper either, and the smoke detector was sitting in a drawer. The lot was dark when we arrived, and we wondered if the place had closed. The desk clerk was away checking whether another guest's room was clean, but she was very nice when we saw her. We'd been driving for 11 hours and only needed a shower and a few hours of sleep, so I figured the low price meant you get what you pay for. I took pictures in case they refused to return my deposit, but thankfully they did.

We came through from NC with my family. The online photos looked great and the lobby was lovely, though I hadn't checked the reviews. At 3 am I was exhausted, so when they said the laundry room was shut and they had no clean towels, I accepted it. They did give us a discount, which I appreciated. The rest of the place was alarming. Outside our room it looked like a trap house, with people wandering around, smoking weed, and openly carrying guns. Inside, there were roaches, plus weed and a white substance on the nightstand. The front desk refunded us and we left for a better hotel in Bossier. In my 37 years, I've never seen a hotel this trashy and horrible.