Hampton Inn Lenoir City

This might have been the worst hotel stay of my life. They are renovating the building which is understandable and makes sense they remain partially open during the renovation. However, nobody informed us at booking that they would be renovating. We didn't book online, we called the hotel directly to create a reservation. They are renovating three (of four) floors at once, including the rooms across from and next to my room. The place is a mess, there are construction materials everywhere: pallets in the carport, stacked boxes in the lobby, doors laying in the hallway, workers cutting holes in the walls, etc. All of the outside doors except the front entrance are broken in some way to circumvent security. As well, the hot water for showering lasts about 4 minutes no matter what time of day. In order to find somewhere quiet to work, I asked the front desk and they shared that the only place was the common area in the lobby. When I went to use the lobby, the staff was using the common area for a potluck carrying on very loudly and taking up both the common area and the walled off breakfast area. It's GREAT that people have fun at work, but there has to be a better way. It was clear they could have staged their potluck in the breakfast seating area for the benefit of guests who have nowhere else to go. All this for an insanely high nightly rate for Hampton at $250/night in suburban Tennessee. What a bad look for an otherwise good hotel chain.

The hotel is under construction, both inside and out. The parking lot is filled with construction materials and empty broken bottles of liquor and trash. There is no front lobby, which means SERIOUSLY limited offers for the “free breakfast”, which didn’t even include juices. There’s a crazy loud ice machine on the 4th floor, don’t accept a room near the elevator. Our shower door leaks water all over the bathroom floor. The walls and doors are THIN. You will hear everything. Good things? The beds were comfy and the AC works. There are multiple food options around (unless you have food allergies, you won’t get much assistance there). It’s close to the highway. And if really needed, there’s a small emergency room in the same parking lot.

Brandi, who was working the front desk during our stay, is the reason I am giving 1 star for service and 3 stars overall. My fiancé and I brought our dog for our one night stay. Our dog is a golden doodle who has an extremely laid back temperament. About 30 to 45 minutes after we received our room key and went up to our room, I received a call from Brandi asking if I was the person with the dog. When I answered yes, she immediately responded by saying, “Um yeah, he’s going absolutely insane upstairs.” I asked her to repeat herself because I was mind blown at the fact that she would call and blindly make assumptions without assessing the situation first. She repeated that my dog was going absolutely insane. As this call took place, my dog was laying on the bed with me and my fiancé, where we had been since our arrival, as we were all tired after our long drive. When I informed her of this, she proceeded to say that 4 people had already come downstairs to complain. Then she said, “Well there are other dogs here too, so maybe it’s them.” After this call, I went out in the hallway to see if I could hear the noise that was blamed on my dog to hear what sounded like a stampede of children running back and forth down the hallway on the floor above us. The fact that we had not even been in our room for an hour before this woman called to blindly make accusations about something she clearly did not attempt to investigate was extremely unprofessional and will prevent us from coming back to this establishment. I personally believe that Brandi needs to take a class on how to properly handle situations in a professional environment, or she will continue to deter future customers. Aside from this, our stay was great.

I travel extensively and always make an effort to stay in Hilton properties when I can. I made the mistake of selecting this location for a recent stay. At no time during the booking process was I informed the building is undergoing a major renovation. When I arrived, there was not even a sign on the building indicating that it was a Hampton Inn. I had planned on staying two nights, but after the first night I left. When I opened the door to my room it had an awful smell and there were stains all throughout the carpet. The heating and air unit was making a loud rattling noise. I would have asked for a different room but when I checked in I was told the hotel was completely booked for the night. The construction noise was so loud I could not get any work done while in my room so I went down to the lobby. There was loud construction noise there too. The complementary breakfast was absolutely horrible- reheated and stale food items. The French toast was so hard it could not be chewed or cut with a knife. However, those were the least of my concerns. There were bugs in both beds- I found this out when they crawled on me and woke me from my sleep. I then decided to use the other bed in my room but saw bugs in it too. I slept in the desk chair the remainder of the night. Also during my brief stay the fire alarm went off. At no point did any hotel employee notify the guests what was going on. It was only after waiting outside in the snow and after the fire department showed up I learned it was a false alarm. I found this out by tracking down a fireman, I never heard anything from employees. While waiting outside during the fire alarm I spoke to other guests. The problems I encountered with this hotel weren’t exclusive to me as they too shared similar experiences. I have debated for over a month on whether to leave this review but I feel other potential guests should be made aware of these issues. The problems I experienced during my stay were so bad I engaged the assistance of the Hilton CEO escalation team to share photos and videos documenting the issues I encountered. I asked them to have management from this hotel to reach out to me. I was really hoping to understand what their justification would have been for so many problems during a one night stay. I never received any contact from management whatsoever. This property seems to be suffering from management and employees who have simply given up. I am hopeful that once the renovations are completed that this hotel will have worked through all of their problems.

The bed is almost impossibly squeaky. There’s the loudest possible construction crew working and blasting music all day. Maybe they are actually trying to be quiet and it’s just the fact that the walls are paper thin. The “always on” button on the fan does not make the fan stay on. There were no warnings about the construction going on when booking the hotel. Oh oh and on day one there was a dead bug in the middle of the bathroom floor that was impossible for a housekeeper to miss…