Hotel Review: Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester, Ohio

Shae and I were originally due to spend most of 2020 out west on our 50 state road trip, but COVID-19 had other ideas. Our plans have changed multiple times and at the time of writing this we’re heading back east.

On our way back across the country we stopped in Cincinnati for a month, mainly to be able to spend some time with our good friends who live there. We weren’t in a particular hurry to get back east, so we decided to stay a month or so.

When checking out our accommodation options, there weren’t many economical options. At first Airbnb seemed like it would be our best option, but we couldn’t find the right property at the right price, so I was pleased when I saw a decent price at the Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester.

We ended up booking a 33 night stay there from mid June to mid July 2020, so several months into the pandemic. Some of our experiences at the hotel in terms of its amenities were therefore limited due to COVID-19, but this review of the Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester will hopefully give you a good idea about what to expect.

Check-In

We arrived at about 7pm; there wasn’t a line at the front desk, so we were able to check in straight away. We’d been able to book the room type we actually wanted (a 1 bedroom suite), so there wasn’t any need to ask about a room upgrade.

The person checking us in was friendly, although we were surprised to see her not wearing a face mask as my understanding was that Marriott (Residence Inn is one of Marriott’s brands) was requiring all staff to wear masks at the time.

1 Bedroom Queen Suite

As mentioned earlier, we’d booked a 1 bedroom suite which had a queen bed and were assigned room 522 which was on the hotel’s top floor.

When entering the suite, the kitchen was on the left and the living room straight ahead. The bedroom and bathroom were through the door on the left between the kitchen and living room.

Living Room

The living room had a comfortable corner sleeper sofa with a coffee table in front and an armchair off to one side. On the other side of the couch was a desk with an office chair.

The living room had a Smart TV on top of a dresser. The TV had an OK selection of channels, but we plugged in our Fire TV stick to have a better selection.

On the other side of the bedroom’s doorway was a dining table with a couple of chairs. Atop the table was coffee, a bag of popcorn, salt and pepper, etc.

Kitchen

Every room at the Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester – and every room at any Residence Inn for that matter – has a full kitchen. That includes a full-sized fridge-freezer, dishwasher, microwave, coffee maker and toaster. A few Residence Inn properties have a full oven with stove top, but this particular property only provided a double stove top.

The cupboards and drawers included plates, dishes, cookware, silverware, cooking utensils, etc. It was great that the cupboards were so large as it meant we could consolidate items into one cupboard to use another cupboard to store our travel pantry so that it didn’t have to sit in its box throughout the stay.

I also liked that they provided four place settings; Candlewood Suites properties (one of IHG’s brands) tend to only provide two place settings.

Something else I appreciated was that the cookware was non-stick.

Bedroom

Our bedroom had a queen bed which was comfortable, as were the pillows. The blackout curtains did a good job of keeping the room dark at night. The bedside lamps both had power outlets which makes it easier to charge your phone by the bed overnight.

Opposite the bed was another TV on top of a dresser.

In addition to the dressers in the living room and bedroom, there was a closet. This contained bedding for the sofa bed, an iron and ironing board, while the doors had full-length mirrors.

Bathroom

Opposite the closet (and therefore still in the bedroom area) was a sink and vanity. One downside to this type of setup is that if you want to use it at night, it’s hard to do that in the dark if someone else you’re staying with is already asleep. I therefore had to dim the screen on my phone and use that as my light at nighttime as Shae always goes to bed earlier than I do.

Next to the faucet was a small bar of soap and makeup removing towelette.

The bathroom itself contained the toilet and a walk-in shower. The shower head had three different settings and had decent water pressure. We had to turn the shower head a little towards the wall when showering though because the shower door didn’t keep the water inside the cubicle properly, meaning the floor got soaked after my first shower.

The water heated up extremely quickly which was nice; that’s something that happens all too infrequently with hotel showers. With this shower, you could stand inside, turn it on and not get sprayed with freezing cold water.

Something else that’s random to note is that the shower didn’t have any drainage issues. Some hotels we stay at take forever to drain due to some kind of blockage, but that was never an issue here.

Marriott – along with some of the other large hotel chains – is moving away from providing small bottles of toiletries in favor of having larger bottles of refillable toiletries which I’m in favor of.

I’ve no idea if the toiletries at the Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester are any good though because they were all empty when we arrived. We’d stayed at Airbnbs for a couple of months before this and so we still had our own toiletries, so it didn’t have a direct impact for us. It did give us cause for concern though – see the ‘Housekeeping’ section further down where I explain why.

Breakfast

In normal times, Residence Inn properties provide a full hot breakfast buffet with eggs, meats, fruit, breads, pastries, yogurt, etc. In these COVID times though, breakfast buffets have understandably been paused. Each hotel brand and each hotel chain that previously offered breakfast has therefore had to decide on an alternative arrangement.

Our stay at the Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester was our first experience with how the Residence Inn brand is approaching this and I’ll admit – I’m underwhelmed. To be fair to this particular property, I’m assuming it’s not their fault and that this setup is how breakfast is running at all Residence Inns nationwide (although I might be wrong on that).

They provided a limited selection of to-go breakfast items, but the selection was incredibly sparse and appeared to be the same every single day. Here’s all that was offered:

• Some kind of egg and cheese tartlets (which have to be microwaved)
• Granola bars
• Yogurt
• Fruit
• Orange juice
• Coffee and tea

And that’s it.

From what I could tell, there was never any kind of variety provided at breakfast – the selection was the same every day of the week, not even changing the type of granola bars on offer.

If this is indeed what’s provided at all Residence Inns nationwide, it feels like Marriott is cheaping out and is providing the bare minimum to cut costs. On the one hand I don’t blame them because of the financial pressure they’re under due to COVID-19, but as a guest it’s a pretty poor breakfast offering. Shae and I therefore made our own breakfast most mornings seeing as we had a kitchen in the room.

Another downside with the breakfast was that for the first week or two of our stay, the yogurts were all past their use by date.

The Mix

Residence Inn properties normally have an evening social from Monday-Wednesday called The Mix. They provide food and beverages, but The Mix is understandably something that can’t carry on as normal right now. Having said that, I was a little surprised that they didn’t provide any kind of to-go snacks in its place from Monday to Wednesday, although it probably wasn’t any great loss considering the sparse breakfast selection.

Amenities

The Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester is an extended stay property, so it has a decent-sized laundry area with three washing machines and five dryers. Both the washers and dryers cost $1.50 per load.

There was a 24/7 fitness room available. I was surprised that this hotel didn’t seem to have any restrictions as to how many people could be in there right now due to COVID-19, as many other hotels are placing restrictions on how many guests can use the equipment and subsequently sanitizing them before anyone else can use the equipment.

I therefore avoided the fitness room because if they weren’t keeping track of when it was being used, I didn’t have any confidence as to when the last time the equipment would have been sanitized. That’s not something that would ever have concerned me ordinarily, but with the pandemic and the additional concern of water droplets in the air, I decided to give it a miss.

The thermostat in the fitness room couldn’t be adjusted by guests, but it did seem to be a nice and cool temperature in there when I took these photos.

Similar to the fitness room, at the time of our stay (June/July 2020, so we were well into the pandemic by that point) there seemingly weren’t any restrictions on using the indoor swimming pool. With water droplets being a concern with COVID-19, we gave this area a miss, although there were certainly lots of other guests (mostly in their 20s) who didn’t seem to have any such concerns.

There was an outdoor sports court which I apparently forgot to take a photo of. Also outdoors was a courtyard with lots of seating, a grill or two for cooking out and a fire pit.

If you need to use a computer during your stay, there’s a small business center set up just off the lobby with a computer and printer for you to use.

Next to the front desk there was a pantry area where you could buy snacks, beverages, etc. A nice touch was that they also stocked bottles of wine for purchase.

Housekeeping

Seeing as Shae and I live in hotels and Airbnbs full-time, we tend to decline housekeeping most days. Despite staying just over a month at the Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester, we only asked for housekeeping on one occasion and so didn’t have much experience with it. We bought toilet paper ourselves as we didn’t really like the kind provided at the hotel, when our trash was full we left it outside our door and so the only other thing we tended to need was dishwasher tablets which we got from the front desk when necessary.

Although we had very limited interaction with housekeeping at the hotel, I wasn’t overly impressed with the service we did receive. On the one day that we had them come in, they didn’t refill the toiletries in the bathroom. Seeing as they were empty when we arrived, that means they didn’t bother to check them either time. If they’re not paying attention to something fairly standard like that, it gave me concerns as to how thorough they were when actually cleaning – something particularly important in the middle of a pandemic.

The day before we had housekeeping come, we’d gotten several dishwasher tablets from the front desk to see us through for several days. For some reason, housekeeping decided to remove all of the dishwasher tablets from our room, leaving none at all. That meant we had to return to the front desk that evening to get more. That wasn’t a big deal, but it was odd behavior to completely remove something which your guests will need to use.

Another disappointing element to the housekeeping service is that when they take away your trash, they’re supposed to leave trash can liners. I’d guess that they only bothered to leave liners about half the time, so we just ended up using plastic shopping bags instead. Once again, not something that’s a big deal, but all these little things added up to leave a poor overall impression.

Pet Policy

The Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester is a pet-friendly hotel and has a pet fee of $100 per stay. That fee isn’t bad if you’re staying a long time like we did, but it sucks if you’re just looking to stay overnight with a pet.

You’re allowed a maximum of two pets per room at the hotel. There’s no weight limit listed on their website, but if you have particularly large dogs it might be worth calling the property beforehand to make sure they don’t have any kind of size restrictions.

There’s a good amount of grass all around the hotel, with a dedicated pet walking area at the back of the property. There are also sidewalks nearby, so you can take your dog for a walk safely.

There seemed to be a few dog parks somewhat nearby, but we only visited one of them during our stay – Wiggly Field Dog Park which can be found in Voice of America MetroPark which is about 10 minutes away from the hotel.

The dog park is a great size and is split into three sections – the north paddock, south paddock and a small dog area.

Truffles is only 10 lbs or so, so normally we’d take her in the small dog section. There was zero shade in that part of the dog park though, so we took her into the south paddock whenever we visited instead as there was shade there and it was always empty.

If you’re planning on visiting Wiggly Field Dog Park, be careful with using Google Maps to get there. When using Google Maps the first time, it directed me to the main road running alongside the dog park, despite there not being an entrance to access it from there. To get to it, use Google Maps to direct you to Voice of America MetroPark, then follow the signs to the dog park once inside. It takes a few minutes to drive through the park to get to the dog park and you have to take a gravel road at the end. When you’re inside Voice of America MetroPark, Google Maps directs you to the dog park just fine – it’s only finding your way to the MetroPark itself initially which is an issue.

Service / COVID-19 Related Issues

As mentioned in the housekeeping section, we were fairly self-sufficient during our stay and so didn’t need much service from housekeeping or the front desk.

There are a few things to share about service from the front desk though. First off, I’ll say that everyone was friendly, so there definitely aren’t any complaints there as no one was ever rude.

There were some disappointing elements to the service though. For starters, it seemed like some staff members decided to hang out in the office area behind the front desk. That meant there was often no one at the front desk when walking through the lobby. Not only is that not particularly welcoming when staying at a hotel, but a couple of times it meant I had to call out to get any service because they didn’t seem to be paying attention as to whether there were any guests standing at the front desk.

My understanding is that at the time of our visit, Marriott was requiring all staff to wear masks. That wasn’t adhered to very strictly, as I think I only saw staff members wearing a mask about 50% of the time. Some were much more responsible about it than others as they always wore their mask. Some staff members hardly ever wore one though, while others often had their masks below their nose or down around their chin which made them pointless.

The fact that the hotel didn’t have any restrictions on using the fitness room, pool or sports court also concerned me as there’s no knowing if and when those areas and equipment were ever cleaned and sanitized. The hotel we stayed at after our stay at this Residence Inn requires guests to book a time slot to use the fitness room or the swimming pool, with staff then going in to clean and sanitize the areas and equipment before anyone else can use them. That’s a much more proactive and sensible policy that I appreciate.

We also had all kinds of issues with our billing. When checking in, I mentioned that we wanted to pay with some Marriott gift cards we had and was advised that we could use them to pay when checking out. Ordinarily that would be fine, but the hotel charged our credit card every week of our stay. I therefore went down to the front desk halfway through our stay to try to resolve that issue. The person at the front desk that day was very helpful and reversed the existing charges and applied gift cards to our charges up to that point, but couldn’t seem to do anything about the upcoming charges. The hotel therefore continued charging our credit card each week for the rest of our stay.

Seeing as we were staying more than 30 nights, we were also eligible for having the taxes on our stays waived (that’s something some states offer, including Ohio – see this post I wrote over on Frequent Miler for a little more about how that works). I contacted the hotel one night through the Marriott app to ask about the taxes and was advised that we wouldn’t have to pay them, but each week we continued being charged them.

When visiting the front desk, I was told that I’d need to come back down after we’d stayed 30 days to sort that out. I’m not sure why they couldn’t set a reminder for themselves to sort that out rather than me having to remind them, but it would save us ~$325 and so was worth me making the effort. On day 31, I stopped by the front desk and was assured the taxes would be removed.

However, the night before we were due to check out I received an email with our final bill which showed that they were still charging us taxes for the entire stay. I therefore had to stop by the front desk again to try to get it resolved. This was very late at night, so the person at the front desk assured me that they’d have the General Manager fix it in the morning before we checked out which, thankfully, they did. It was far more hassle sorting that out than it should have been though.

If I hadn’t known about not having to pay the room taxes though, I’m curious what would have happened to that money. Do hotels still pay the county/state those taxes, or do they class this as a profit center and pocket that money themselves?

Check-In & Check-Out Times

You can check in at the Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester at 3pm, while check-out is at 11am. Depending on your status with Marriott, you might be eligible for a 4pm late check-out. I have Titanium status and so was eligible for a 4pm late check-out, but we had other stuff we needed to do on the day we checked out, so we didn’t take advantage of that benefit.

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi at the hotel is free for all guests, but it had an abysmal speed throughout our month-long stay. Here’s a screenshot I took using Speedtest.net:

One thing I did appreciate is that we didn’t have to keep logging back in to the internet each day. We stay in Hyatt Places fairly frequently and when staying at their properties, your internet connection usually cuts out after 24 hours and so you have to log back in. While that might seem like a little thing, Shae and I both work online and so we’ve lost work/parts of blog posts due to not realizing we’ve hit that 24 hour threshold before.

Location

The hotel is on the north side of Cincinnati and is 20-30 minutes from downtown Cincinnati depending on traffic. It’s about a mile away from an Ikea and Topgolf, with grocery stores being a 5-10 minute drive away. There are several restaurants within walking distance, including a Skyline Chili – something I highly recommend if you’ve never eaten there before.

If you’re after other suggestions of things to do in Cincinnati, here’s a list of everything else we’ve done there when visiting in recent years.

Parking

It’s free to park at the Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester and there was never any problem finding a parking space as there were spaces both at the front and the rear of the property.

Cost

We managed to get a great rate when staying at this hotel because our 1 bedroom queen suite cost $79 per night before tax and $88.88 per night with tax. Part of the reason it was relatively cheap is due to our length of stay as I think we got a long term discount.

As mentioned earlier, staying for more than 30 consecutive nights meant that we didn’t have to pay any room taxes as the state waives it for long term stays such as ours, although it’s something you have to proactively ask for – it’s not automatically waived. That meant we saved $9.88 per night in taxes, or $326.04 for the entire stay.

I also mentioned earlier that we paid with gift cards. That’s because Marriott offered a 20% discount on them in May 2020, so I stocked up on some knowing that we had this upcoming stay. At $79 per night with no tax, our stay cost $2,607 seeing as we stayed 33 nights. By paying with those gift cards we bought at a 20% discount, our net cost was $2085.60. That works out to be $63.20 per night which is excellent value for a 1 bedroom suite with a full kitchen.

If we’d used points for our stay, it would have cost 14,773 points per night. That’s would ordinarily be a reasonable redemption, but paying for our stay was better value as we’d only have gotten 0.43cpp (cents per point) of value due to the low rate, no taxes and 20% discount on the gift cards.

Points Earned

I’m not entirely sure how many points we earned from our stay yet. After they charged my credit card for the first couple of weeks of our stay, we received our points shortly afterwards. However, we haven’t received any points for the final three weeks of our stay, so I’ll be following up with Marriott about that in a few days if the points still don’t post to my account.

Based on the points we received for the first couple of weeks though, I think we’ll be earning 20,000-25,000 points for the stay. That’s not a huge number of points considering how long we stayed, but it’s based on a fairly cheap rate, plus the Residence Inn brand only earns 5 points per dollar spent versus 10 points per dollar for most of Marriott’s other brands.

I’d paid for the gift cards with a Marriott credit card, so that purchase earned us 6 points per dollar. We therefore indirectly earned 15,642 points when paying for our stay as well.

Final Thoughts

If we’d visited the Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester earlier on in our road trip, I’m sure we’d have had a much more positive experience overall as there would’ve been a normal buffet breakfast, there wouldn’t have been any COVID-19 concerns, etc.

There was still a lot to like though. Our 1 bedroom suite was very nice and the hotel’s amenities were – in theory – very good, even if we didn’t really use them ourselves.

There were a number of negatives about our stay though. The multiple billing issues were a hassle, especially seeing as I specifically stated when checking in that we wanted to pay with gift cards and had to remind them about the room taxes numerous times. The breakfast options were also barely worth bothering with.

My bigger concerns were COVID-19 related though. The very limited housekeeping service we asked for was poorly done and so I have doubts as to how comprehensively they clean rooms as a result. Mask-wearing by staff was inconsistent and even when they did wear masks, they often needn’t have bothered seeing as the masks were seemingly used as chin-warmers instead.

The hotel didn’t make any effort with enforcing mask-wearing by other guests either. I’d guess that barely 50% of guests we saw wore masks and that’s a generous estimate, although that wasn’t too surprising seeing as staff weren’t doing it themselves.

Other than a member of the housekeeping staff spraying the buttons in the elevator one time, I don’t think I personally saw any staff sanitizing anything, although to be fair Shae apparently saw a staff member wiping down some tables at one point. At the time of writing this review, we’re staying at a Hyatt Place and on our very first evening I saw staff members sanitizing common areas more than I did for our entire 33 night stay at the Residence Inn. I’m not saying that they didn’t ever sanitize common areas at the Residence Inn, but for how long we stayed there I’m surprised I never saw it happen other than that one time.

For example, when using the luggage carts when checking in and checking out, no staff members at the Residence Inn Cincinnati North/West Chester bothered to sanitize them, so if we were infected with COVID-19, the next guests using the luggage carts could’ve been infected. Compare that with the Hyatt Place we’re staying at right now – when returning the luggage cart after checking in, a staff member at the front desk immediately sanitized it.

Would I stay at this Residence Inn again? Probably. But Marriott (and all hotel chains to be fair) need to make sure that their properties are doing as much as they can to ensure the safety of their guests seeing as the pandemic isn’t likely to be over anytime soon.

Truffles Approval Rating

Truffles gives this hotel four paws out of four – pawfect! She doesn’t need much out of a hotel stay – a quiet room at night, grassy areas around the hotel, ideally a dog park nearby and – most importantly – love and attention from the front desk staff. She got all those during our stay, so she had a great time.

She can also attest as to how comfortable the couch cushions were.

Our Rating

Room = 4.8 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 4.7 / 5
Food = 2 / 5
Location = 4.3 / 5
Service = 2.5 / 5
Dealing With COVID-19 (a new – hopefully temporary – category for our hotel reviews) = 1.5 / 5
Overall Value = 4.8 / 5

Total = 3.51 / 5

(n.b. That 3.51 / 5 rating feels a little harsh as it’s a nice property overall. They’ve mainly been dinged in the scoring by COVID-related matters, although that’s a primary concern when traveling right now and so it’s probably a fair score in reality.)

Address

Residence Inn, 6240 Muhlhauser Rd, West Chester Township, OH 45069