These last two weeks I stayed at the Holiday Inn Oklahoma City-Airport. It’s 3 miles north of the airport and about 15 miles of stacked traffic from Downtown Oklahoma City. The corporate rate was $47/night; it’s a good value hotel.

When I checked in, it didn’t seem to matter that I held a Platinum membership in their Priority Club program. I was put in a room with two full-size beds. Besides being too short, they were extra firm and uncomfortable. This week I moved to a room with a king bed in it, and it was also excessively firm. The pillows on the other hand were extremely puffy and compressed a lot, providing little support.

TV had 22 channels, including ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNEWS, with HBO and Discovery Channel. A standard window heater/air-conditioner heated the room without any drafts. There was only one available outlet for the laptop, and the phone and the Palm had to be charged with the other outlet in the bathroom. The king room had good space for exercise. The wireless broadband was weak but usable, 802.11g normally-54 Mbps service yielding only 11 Mbps and only cutting out twice.

The bathroom had the same amount of space as most hotel rooms. The shower required no warm-up time and was properly pressured. The towels and rags had been worn thin.

The fitness room sported two treadmills, two ellipticals, a recumbent bike, and a normal exercise bike. Only the displays of the treadmills worked. The room had a TV, but the remote control was nowhere to be found. The treadmill worked fine and sported contact plates to measure heart rate.

Room service was quick, and the pizza was good, Pizzeria Uno-branded. After a couple of days I finally found out about the free breakfast vouchers for Priority Club members. The buffet was good but the service was minimal—not many earned tips.

Laundry service followed my no-starch, press, and hang instructions appropriately, but they stapled their identification tags through my clothes instead of just through the tags and around my clothes. Not good.

In some sections of the hotel—where I was the first week—parking was atrocious, an empty courtyard separating the nearest parking space with my outside door. The second week my room was a lot closer to the cars. Access and egress is easy, as the hotel is on a corner where one can exit a side street and enter Meridian Ave. via a traffic light.

The value is good, but the ultra-firm bed and the distance from the training center downtown is enough to consider a more expensive but closer hotel. I may have to get another frequent-stay account, as there are no Holiday Inns or Hilton chain hotels downtown.


Show On Map