SureStay Plus By Best Western Niagara Falls East

We’ve been here three times, booking three or four rooms in early December for Christmas shopping with my wife’s family. The rooms are clean, breakfast buffet has plenty, and the customer service is excellent. Sangeeta and her staff get a 5/5 from us. We’ll be back next December.

Noise was the main problem throughout our stay. We asked for a top-floor room months in advance because we’re light sleepers. At check-in, we were told people lived on the top floor and were given a second-floor room. After we explained our concern about hearing footsteps above, the clerk assigned us a third-floor room instead. She mentioned quiet hours, which we took to mean TVs and loud conversations, not people walking around. Only a few rooms on our floor seemed occupied, but we heard at least two families of four or five talking loudly. We could make out conversations from several doors away in the hall. Our white noise machine and earplugs helped in the room, though one person paced the hallway on speakerphone at 10:30 at night, loud enough to cut through them. The man across the hall was quiet except for getting ice and using his blender; he said he worked from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. We saw construction workers in the halls but didn’t hear them. After we’d asked staff the previous night to enforce quiet hours, groups were put in rooms on both sides of us the next day. A child in one room hopped up and down noisily for a long time, and the other group had the TV up much of the time. We asked to move, but a man at the desk said the hotel was full. That didn’t seem true given how few cars were in the lot, and online searches of the official site and a hotel consolidator showed many rooms available. It was already past bedtime by then, so we stayed put. One staff member eventually did enforce quiet hours, though another resisted, and most of the staff were nice. We also found dirt and grime in several places, including a disgusting toilet bowl, and hairs on bathroom surfaces, the floor, bedding, and desk. I used paper towels to clean what I could, assuming the other rooms would be similar. The breakfast was sparse for a hot hotel breakfast, with few choices, no potatoes, and the same food each day, but it was enough. Our two-queen room’s closet was awkwardly tucked into a corner beside a bed close to the wall. I’m small and could squeeze through, but it was easier to crawl across the bed. The refrigerator’s “freezer” probably wouldn’t keep anything frozen, though we didn’t test it. In my update to the hotel, I said we’d complained about noise every night but hadn’t raised the other issues. I figured they couldn’t add breakfast choices or move the closet cubby, and I’d already cleaned as much as I could because it seemed quicker.

The price was reasonable, and the location was handy for the border and outlet mall. The room with one bed was on the small side, but the bigger issue was the bed itself. There’s no way it was queen-sized, it was one of the smallest “queens” I’ve slept on, and the mattress felt too soft and springy. We found hair on the pillow and bed, though the place was mostly clean. I’ve never stayed somewhere without a toilet lid, and I prefer flushing with one closed for hygiene. At 8:20 on a Thursday morning, breakfast wasn’t available even after we waited 15 minutes. The Wi-Fi was terrible at night and didn’t always work.

The service was great, and everyone was very polite. There was a water problem, but they fixed it right away and within the expected time. Rooms were clean, beds were comfortable, and breakfast was good. Everything else was great too, five out of five for me.