URBAN by Hotel Inn 3300 South Vista Avenue, Boise, ID 83705

"First time in this hotel. Also, the last. Good things first since there are only two: it was cheap, and the staff were kind. The pics included show what I found at a glance: a taped over smoke detector, a bunch of junk in corners all over the room, and a needle tucked away in a bag of fast food chips. When I set my hands down on the bathroom counter, one of them came back with a bunch of make-up on it. There is growing mold in the bathroom because there was no fan. There were windows facing an indoor pool that made no sense -- why would I *ever* want to open a window to watch people use an indoor pool? The cooling/heating unit released a foul smell into the room. I could hear staff plainly talking to each other in front of multiple guests (and we all looked around at each other as if to ask if we all heard the same thing) about how there were entire blocks of rooms that had been checked out but not cleaned for multiple days. The lot is held by one owner but split into 3 hotels, but if a fire alarm in one hotel goes off, guests in the other 2 buildings get woken up for it because all 3 buildings apparently need to evacuate even though they aren't joined. There were drunks and druggies milling about outside the hotel who weren't even guests. While all the exterior doors were supposed to have secure, carded entry, the two that were nearest our room both had issues: on Door 4, the card reader didn't work, and on Door 3, the lock didn't work -- anyone can just walk into Door 3 with no key card. If you forgot any toiletries at home beyond shampoo and lotion, you're going to have to leave the hotel to find it because they don't have any of that up front, not even for sale. We only made the reservation because it was cheap through Hotels[dot]com. This was one of those moments when the deal was too good to be true."

"When I called to directly reserve a room the woman was kind of rude about booking it over the phone, but I was able to convince her I was not interested in booking online. The lobby area is nice. The rest of the place was gross. It is in dire need of some serious deep cleaning. The hallway and stairways all need vaccuumed and cleaned. The pool and hot tub area needs renovated. After using the pool and hot tub we had to shower to get the slimy feeling out of our hair. No fan in the bathroom, and it looked as though mold was growing on the ceiling. The rooms were not very clean. The lighting throughout the hotel is very dark, so I can only imagine how gross it really is. We had ants everywhere in our room. They got into all of our belongings. We were really happy to leave. Did not attempt to eat any kind of meals there. When we checked out we let the front desk know about the ants, and they did not seem surprised or seem to care that it was an issue. We were killing ants that were crawling on us for hours after leaving the hotel."

"Ava was able to switch us to rooms on the Ramada/Urban side due to construction and availability on the America's Best Value side at no extra charge. Thanks! However, after experiencing the rooms, I'm downgrading my review. One room smelled like smoke, the other had some unidentifiable sour smell. Both carpets had sticky spots. One toilet seat was damaged/gross. Bathrooms had no fans. One TV screen was damaged. Everything was generally slightly dirty, particularly on edges/crevices. The whole family couldn't wait to get out of there, and we toughed it out only because we got a good price. This hotel needs some work, and it appears they're moving in the right direction with remodeling. But in the mean time rooms need deep cleaning and maintenance with more attention to detail. You shouldn't want to take a shower after leaving a 3 star hotel."

"Upon arrival the front desk was nice. The front looks decent, thought it wasn’t a bad hotel. Checked in around 3:10, when arriving into the room noticed the bathroom was dirty. The floor wasn’t cleaned, and tub was disgusting. The room wasn’t vacuumed, there was chewed up gum stuck to the floor. Our tv wasn’t working, and had been up to desk 3 times before them saying we needed to switch rooms. They moved us to the second floor, immediately walking upstairs our group started coughing cause of a weird gas smell. To the point where one of us threw up. Our room door didn’t open (the room they just moved us too) so I went back to the lobby and complained, and they moved us to a different room, again. Couldn’t even bare to in that hotel room any longer. We didn’t stay the night that we booked for. Asked for a refund, and they refunded me half of what I paid. There’s a lot of people hanging around the hotel, not normal. Like really big crowds. Definitely one of the sketchiest hotels I’ve been too. Wouldn’t recommend."

"Great price, bed was clean and comfortable. Had to get a new key card multiple times a day. Carpet was not vacuumed well, rather dirty, same with the bathroom floor. Room service never came for the several days we stayed. We asked for clean towels and were given pool towels once, and couldn’t get any more. Hallways were rather dirty and the whole hotel smelled a bit gross. Our room was super musty smelling. There was rust in the shower, and blood stain on the toilet paper roll. Hotel was quiet."