After spending 12 days visiting Washington D.C., we made our way down to Hampton Roads, VA to spend Thanksgiving week near family.
To give us a little more space, we decided to book a hotel stay rather than stay with Shae’s mom or dad. There were a few good options, with the Hampton Inn Norfolk Chesapeake (Greenbrier Area) winning out due to a low paid rate.
We stayed there for a week, although most of that time was spent away from the hotel. We got a fairly good sense of the hotel though, so here’s our review of the Hampton Inn Norfolk Chesapeake (Greenbrier Area).
Check-In
Before checking in at the hotel, we headed to Portsmouth to see some of Shae’s family for dinner, so we didn’t arrive at the hotel until about 7pm.
The check-in process was quick and within a couple of minutes we had our keys for room 135.
Bedroom
When booking our stay, there were three room types available to choose from, all of which cost the same. We therefore chose the 1 king bed with sofa bed as Shae’s dad was coming to stay with us for a couple of nights over Thanksgiving and this was the only room type with a sofa bed.
When entering the room the bathroom was immediately to the left, with the king bed beyond that on the left. The closet and desk were on the far wall, with the sofa bed, TV, mini fridge, etc. on the right side of the room.
As with all our past Hampton Inn stays, the bed was very comfortable and so we slept well on it. The lamps on both sides of the bed had two power outlets on them, something we appreciate to make it easier to charge our phones overnight.
We weren’t the only ones to find the bed comfortable – Truffles slept well each night too.
Along the far wall was the room’s closet on the left, with a desk and office chair to the right of that. The desk was on wheels, with a fixed shelf above that.
Inside the closet was an iron, ironing board, luggage rack and blanket for the sofa bed.
The layout of the room was a little weird though. On the room’s right hand wall was both the sofa bed and TV, meaning you couldn’t watch TV from the sofa. We therefore decided to move the sofa to the large space in front of the closet so that it was parallel to it and thus faced the TV for most of the stay.
That didn’t work when Shae’s dad stayed a couple of nights as the bed couldn’t be unfolded in that space, so we rotated it so that its back was against the left wall, but that meant it blocked the closet for those two days.
This is the second hotel we’ve stayed at recently where the room designers didn’t seem to bother paying attention to how guests might actually want to use the room (the TownePlace Suites Bridgeport Clarksburg in West Virginia being the other one). A better layout would’ve been to have the closet on the right hand wall, with the sofa bed against the room’s left wall.
To the right of the sofa bed’s original location was a unit holding a mini fridge, microwave and TV, with a bench we used to hold a suitcase to the right of that.
The Hampton Inn Norfolk Chesapeake (Greenbrier Area) offers a very good selection of TV channels.
Bathroom
The bathroom was back by the room’s entrance. The sink and vanity was on the left…
…with the bathtub with shower on the right.
The water pressure in the bathroom was very poor; the sink’s tap was very slow, while the shower’s water pressure was awful. You had to stand directly beneath the shower head in order to get wet as it didn’t have the pressure to actually spray outward. That’s fine for rainfall showers, but this was no rainfall shower!
Toiletries were Neutrogena which were pretty good.
Breakfast
One of the things I enjoy about staying at Hampton Inns is that they tend to serve breakfast until 10am. I’m a night owl, so not having to be up for breakfast that ends at 9am is something I always appreciate.
Most breakfast options were the same each day, although the hot options rotated each day. The day these photos were taken there was bacon, biscuits (but no sausage gravy) and potatoes, but other mornings there was scrambled eggs, egg white omelets, cheesy omelets, sausage, etc.
The Hampton Inn Norfolk Chesapeake (Greenbrier Area) also had a 24/7 coffee and tea station. The hotel staff did a great job with keeping the teabags well stocked. Neither of us drink coffee though, so I’ve no idea how fresh that was throughout the day.
Amenities
The Hampton Inn Norfolk Chesapeake (Greenbrier Area) has a few amenities guests can take advantage of. There’s a fitness room with several pieces of equipment, weights and medicine balls.
There’s an outdoor swimming pool, but it was closed during our stay as we were there at the end of November.
There’s a business center in the lobby with two computers and a printer.
There are a couple of vending machines with beverages and snacks, along with an ice machine on the first floor. I didn’t explore the rest of the hotel to see if these were on every floor seeing as we were staying on the first floor ourselves.
There was a water fountain in this area which was out of order. Also out of order was the abysmal spelling; it’s impressive that 20% of the words in such a short message were misspelled – they must’ve ignored the red squiggly lines on Word before printing it off.
The hotel doesn’t have guest laundry facilities which was a bit of a shame.
Pet Policy
The Hampton Inn Norfolk Chesapeake (Greenbrier Area) is a pet-friendly hotel, accepting pets weighing up to 50 lbs. Even better, there’s no pet fee which we loved seeing as we travel with Truffles.
There was plenty of grass all around the hotel for your dog to do its stuff. There’s also a sidewalk outside the hotel, so you can safely take a walk with your pup if you want.
Service
Service was pretty good at the hotel, although we were rarely there and so had little interaction with the staff.
Check-In & Check-Out Times
The check-in time is 3pm, while check-out is at 11am.
Wi-Fi
The Wi-Fi connection was good, although it was frustrating that we had to reconnect every 24 hours. My laptop has to be restarted in order to reconnect, so it was annoying when it happened when I was in the middle of working on stuff online.
Location
The Hampton Inn Norfolk Chesapeake (Greenbrier Area) is just off I-64, so it’s fairly convenient to get to. It’s near many grocery stores and restaurants, as well as being less than 2 miles to Greenbrier Mall.
Due to all the other hotels and businesses around, it seemed to be a safe area and I was happy walking Truffles around late at night.
Parking
There were a lot of parking spots all around the hotel, with all of it being free.
Cost
I don’t know if we got lower pricing for booking a week-long stay, if it was cheaper for Thanksgiving or if it’s always priced so low, but our nightly rate was a very reasonable $76.41 including tax.
If we’d redeemed points, it would’ve cost us an average 16,286 points per night which is also reasonable. Booking a paid rate meant that we’d earn a decent number of points though, although I managed to mess that up a little.
At the time, Hilton was offering triple points when paying with a Hilton Amex card. I covered this promotion over on Frequent Miler, but forgot to do one important thing – I didn’t register our own accounts for the promo! We therefore missed out on 9,262 bonus points which is frustrating.
We did earn 23,586 points though, 10,000 of which was because this stay pushed us over 40 nights for the year and so we got those 10,000 points as a Milestone Reward. In addition to the 23,586 points, we earned 7,488 points from our stay by paying with my new Hilton Aspire credit card that earns 14 points per dollar when paying for Hilton stays. That means we earned a total of 31,074 points for a $534.88 stay which is a great return, although that would’ve been 40,336 if I hadn’t messed up with the promo registration.
I also booked the stay having clicked through from the Kiindly shopping portal. They were offering 3% cashback at the time, so that’s $13.89 we should get back as the cashback is awarded on the pre-tax cost.
Final Thoughts
We had a decent stay at the Hampton Inn Norfolk Chesapeake (Greenbrier Area). I liked having a mini fridge that was on the larger side of things, breakfast was good each morning and there was a decent selection of TV channels.
There wasn’t much that was negative about the stay, although the room’s layout was bizarre seeing as the sofa was pointed at a blank wall seeing as it was on the same side of the room as the TV.
If we need to book a hotel in the area again, I’ll definitely consider this one if its paid and/or points rates remain so low.
Truffles Approval Rating
Having no pet fee always gets a thumbs paws up from Truffles. There was a good amount of grass around the hotel, plus it was nice that there was a sidewalk outside the hotel so I could take her for a walk.
Our Rating
Room = 4.4 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 4.0 / 5
Food = 4.5 / 5
Location = 4.3 / 5
Service = 4.3 / 5
Overall Value = 4.7 / 5
Total = 4.37 / 5
Address
Hampton Inn, 701 Woodlake Dr, Chesapeake, VA 23320
[…] to the venue as possible. The ideal hotel would’ve been the Hampton Inn Norfolk Chesapeake (which we’d stayed at before) as it was only a couple of minutes walk away, but the room rates – whether booking with cash […]