Candlewood Suites Houston - Pasadena by IHG

I didn't see any bugs, despite what other reviewers said. The TV was good and the beds were adequate, and the property is gated, probably because of the trailer park behind the hotel. But the carpets are filthy and smell like dog and feet. Rubbing one with a towel turned it black. If they had them professionally cleaned, I’d give the place 4 stars. A better shower head would make it 5. The water pressure is so weak it’s like a trickle, and I have to spend three or four times longer showering to get clean. So much for saving water. The place itself is decent, but it really needs to be cleaner.

The one thing I’d change is adding more light to the rooms. Otherwise, everything was exceptional. I come here when I visit family, and the accessible room had everything I needed to look after myself away from home. Customer service has always been great.

We’d stayed at the Hampton Inn down the road before and never noticed a gas smell there. During this week at Candlewood Suites, though, the lobby smelled of “gas.” The desk said it was a normal odor from nearby refineries, so maybe we just caught it that week. Our room never smelled that way. We checked in to a clean, nice room with comfortable beds, a full-size fridge, stovetop, and microwave. We didn’t get housekeeping during the week, but that was fine since we didn’t need it, and the desk gave us extra towels and blankets when we asked. What happened after checkout is why I’m unsure about staying here again. My older Mom has an Apple Watch with health tracking and fall detection that could call for help if she fell and was unresponsive. She wasn’t wearing it, and it apparently slipped out of her purse and under the bed while we packed. She noticed it was missing the next day. My sister, husband, and I had gone home out of state, but Mom was still nearby with family. Find My showed the watch at the hotel. She called, and the front desk said it hadn’t been found. I called too, and was told the same, though the representative said she’d check the vacant room again. A few hours later, my cousin brought Mom back. They weren’t allowed into the room; the representative went to look while they waited. My cousin offered to trigger the watch’s alarm, but the representative said that wasn’t necessary. That felt like a serious red flag. My cousin waited until the representative should have been in the room, then set off the alarm. The sound came from behind the front desk. When the representative came back saying she hadn’t found it in the room, my cousin told her the sound was coming from the employee break room behind the desk. They set it off again, and the representative came back with the watch, saying she hadn’t known to check there. I’ve worked in hotels, and they keep a lost-and-found area for items found in rooms or around the property. I assume a housekeeper found the watch and turned it in. I don’t know which employee chose not to keep it in lost and found or contact us. Someone in Human Resources may want to investigate who was responsible. I know lost items aren’t guaranteed to turn up, but this shouldn’t have been handled this way. We’ll be back in town in early spring, and I’m not sure I can trust the safety of our belongings here. You have to assume you can trust a place until there’s a valid reason not to. Now we have one.

There are plenty of restaurants nearby, and Walmart is only a few blocks away. The room was clean and comfortable, and the hotel has small kitchenettes for extended stays. We were only there for one night, but the free guest laundry was handy. We washed clothes from our weeklong road trip before heading to a cruise ship in Galveston.