What to Expect from a Covid-19 Hotel Stay

Our stay at the Comfort Inn was far from comfortable.

I liked to describe it as a step up from cabin camping.

We had two adjoining double rooms, and I was grateful for the extra space. Fitting four people and a disagreeable 15-year-old cat in one hotel room would have been difficult.

Don’t expect the typical comforts of a hotel stay during COVID-19.

No Breakfast Buffet

For good reason, the breakfast buffet is on a break during the pandemic. I get it.

Instead, we received brown paper bags with a pre-packaged muffin, bottled water and choice of an orange or an apple. The muffin was nothing to write home about. My husband’s apple was very bruised.

After a lazy morning watching tv, the kids and I strolled up to the front desk at 9:15 to pick-up the brown bag breakfast. The front desk employee gave us our choices, though added that technically breakfast ends at 9:00 a.m.

I’m so glad she did us a favor and relinquished three of the ten brown paper bags that were already lined up behind the desk.

Geez. So much for hospitality!

Limited Housekeeping

I’ve often thought that daily housekeeping is excessive in hotels, but in comparison COVID-19 housekeeping is almost non-existent.

If you are staying in a hotel for more than 14 days, your room will receive service on day 15.

That’s two weeks without cleaning a hotel room. Ick.

We were in our hotel room for eight days. I put out our garbage and recycling a few times, vacuumed our room myself (to keep the cat litter that fell out of her litter box under control), and requested some new towels.

Why is it that towels really don’t dry well in hotels?

Beyond that, I requested service on day six. I assumed, incorrectly, that that meant cleaning, vacuuming, changing sheets, replacing towels. We came back to our room to find the floor in need of a vacuuming and beds made with old sheets.

Since it was later at night, I just requested the front desk employee to bring us a vacuum and sheets. We vacuumed and changed our sheets ourselves.

And I brought dish soap, so I washed re-usable spoons and water bottles we brought for eating in the room. Our detached sink (not in the bathroom) became a kitchen sink too.

I did two loads of laundry on a rainy morning too.

Changing sheets, vacuuming, washing dishes, and laundry made me feel like I was at home. Moms never get a break! 😐

Limited Seating

This is not a surprise, nor unique to the pandemic, but when you’re not eating in restaurants, you are eating in a hotel room with limited places to sit. My hubs and I alternated between eating at the desk, on a bed, or in a chair when our cat was not sleeping in it.

I am really looking forward to my couch and kitchen table at home.

The Perils of Traveling with Pets

Our silver tabby cat is a cantankerous, fifteen year old girl the size of Garfield. Her name is Sumo Kitty, and she’s definitely lived up to it.

We have always left her home when we’ve traveled, but this time, with work being done on our entire first floor, we opted to take her along with us instead of boarding her. We thought that boarding Sumo would have been too traumatic. Even the hotel stay has been a lot for our big kitty.

Poor thing!

She does seem happy to spend time with us at the Comfort Inn.

If you’re traveling with pets, I’d definitely recommend calling the hotel first. Some “pet friendly hotel directories” are simply inaccurate. Choice hotels and the Radisson accepted pets.

In a double room, there is not much space to put the cat’s things. We decided to place her litter box on the side of the bed closest to the bathroom, next to the side of the bed where my husband slept.

One night, as he watched something on his Kindle, he started to doze off. He heard something fall onto the ground, and woke up with a startle, realizing that a pillow fell off of the bed and into…..

Wait for it…

the cat’s litterbox!

He tossed the poo pillow into the far corner of the hotel room and grabbed one of the five spare pillows from the bed we were not using.

Ick.

This is a great analogy for 2020: it’s like when your pillow falls into cat pee when you’re staying in a dirty hotel room with a crappy brown bag breakfast.

The Bright Spot: Swimming

We definitely enjoyed the pool procedures: we swam almost daily and had the pool to ourselves. We had to check out a pool key from the front desk, so they could track capacity.

My kids had a great time in the pool!

My advice: tread carefully and lower your expectations when you are staying in a hotel during COVID-19.