Review: The Breckinridge Inn in Louisville, Kentucky

My fiancé and I decided for Christmas 2008, we would take our children by car to Pennsylvania to see my family. Not only would this serve as a vacation, but in the process, it would also be an educational experience. We live in Rural Kansas, so this would be quite an adventure for all of us. This leads me to the review of our first hotel stop, Breckinridge Inn, located in Louisville, Kentucky. I found the Breckinridge Inn on a very popular hotel search engine. My first impression was that it looked well kept, and suitable. Upon our arrival, we were exhausted to say the least, so the only thing that interested us was a good night's rest.

Front Desk

We arrived around 6pm, and the front desk was very disorganized, not to mention making jokes when the time was extremely inappropriate. We had a coupon for a discount, and as I gave it to them, the front desk exclaimed, "We do not take coupons when a reservation has been made!" I was thinking to myself, we call in advance, give a credit card number to secure the room in advance, and they cannot honor a discount coupon. How absurd!

Another Note about the Front Desk

The front desk staff was very unprofessional. Here is a great example:

Phone Use

If you plan on using your phone in the room, make sure you ask them to turn the phone on before the current staff leaves their shift. Now, turning on your phone will cost you an extra $10.00, but at least you will not run into the problems we did. When we found out our phone was not on, we requested it to be turned on, and the front desk staff told us about that we could not get our phone turned on because we did not request it be turned on when the front desk staff checked us in. Apparently, this staff member just came onto her shift. When we explained to her that we had no idea of this rule, she sighed in the phone and said, "Ok, I will turn them on...sigh." I must say, they did not charge us the extra $10.00, but I believe that in all the hoops we had to jump through, I believe we earned that consideration.

Linens

When we arrived in the room, we had enough linens for one person. We had to walk down to the front desk to pick up more.

Room Cleanliness

The room seemed to be clean, but the bathroom floor looked dirty near the toilet. We had a double room, meaning the two rooms were conjoined with an inside door joining both rooms. There were however, adequate toiletries such as paper, tissues, soap, and shampoo.

In addition, I was very disturbed about these plastic tabs left on the beds and hanging in the bathroom near the linens that say, "If you don't use this towel, please save the environment and leave for someone else." In addition, "a tab that said, "If you do not use this bed, please, save our environment and leave this tab on the bed so we know that you did not use the bed." Now I am paraphrasing, however, that makes me wonder about how often linens are changed out. Could I have been sleeping on linens someone else laid on? I am just as environmentally aware as the next person is, but to have those tabs lying around the room gave me the feeling that my family needs to be aware of the possibility that the linens may not be as clean as they look.

Safety

Be careful if you stay in a room that joins two standard rooms together. The door that joined our two rooms together has a sharp edge on it that I cut my foot on twice! I notified front desk about it, and they said they would take care of it, but they did not write anything down, or ask which room it was.

Other Amenities

Other amenities at the inn includes an indoor swimming pool (which we did not get to try due to the sheer exhaustion of our drive) and wireless internet in every room. The wireless internet was very reliable, and was convenient to have so I could upload pictures from the road trip I took with my PDA onto my Flickr account.

Breakfast

The most pleasant part of our stay at the Breckinridge Inn was the breakfast bar they have for all their guests. The Inn has many choices, including hot and cold cereals, pastries, and beverages to choose. The dining area appeared to be very clean, and decorated very nicely. A tall Christmas tree adorned with gold ornaments, which made our Christmas adventure more festive. However, the dining staff at the inn insisted that the hot food stay in the dining area and not taken out, even to the guest rooms due to liability. I thought that was rather odd, since after we left it was OUR liability if we were injured due to the food, unless it was a food-borne illness.

Overall, The Breckinridge Inn is a "you get what you pay for" type of inn. We paid $55.00 per room, and if you know what to do or say ahead of time, the stay will be a bit more pleasant.

I think this inn has a lot of potential, if it took its customers seriously, instead of putting on the appearance that this inn is elegant. The outside looks nice, but the important areas like the guest rooms, are what truly shows a customer that the inn cares about your comfort. I give the Breckinridge Inn a C-.