After staying in Hampton, VA for a couple of weeks, we moved on to Roanoke, VA for another couple of weeks (check out this post for everything we did there during our most recent visit).
During past visits to Roanoke we stayed at what was once the Sheraton (but which I think is now an independent hotel) and the Hyatt Place. Our original plan was to stay at the Hyatt Place Roanoke again as it’s great value when using points, but I found a great paid rate at the Residence Inn and so we stayed there instead.
One benefit of the Residence Inn brand is that every room has a kitchen which is particularly helpful if you’re staying two weeks like we did. Overall, it’s a nice hotel but it had one major flaw which would keep us from staying there again in the future. Check out this full review of the Residence Inn Roanoke Airport for what that problem was.
Check-In
We got a late checkout at the Embassy Suites Hampton Convention Center, so we didn’t get to Roanoke until almost 6pm. We’d booked a studio suite and I checked their website just before we arrived to see if they had any one bedroom suites available.
I have Titanium status with Marriott (Residence Inn is one of Marriott’s brands) and so I was hoping we’d be able to get an upgrade so that the bedroom would be completely separate from the living area, but unfortunately none of their one bedroom suites were available. That’s the downside to booking longer stays like this – if their one bedroom suites are fully booked even if for only one day, it’s not possible to get an upgrade for the entire stay. In theory we could move rooms for some of the stay but that’s a lot of hassle, so we were fine just having a studio suite.
The front desk had a table in front of it to help ensure good distancing between the front desk staff and guests due to COVID, although there surprisingly wasn’t a plastic barrier on the front desk which is what most hotels have used since the pandemic started.
After checking in, we were given our room key to room 111 and so we headed down to our studio suite.
King Studio Suite
When entering our room the kitchen was on the left, the living room on the right and the bedroom and bathroom further back.
Living Room
The living area had a sleeper sofa, armchair and coffee table. To the side of the couch was a desk and office chair.
The TV remote had been placed in a plastic bag and a small pack of antiseptic wipes was provided with it. I think the remote might’ve worked while still in the bag, but we removed it from there.
The room had a dining table and a couple of chairs next to the kitchen which we used as a second desk.
Between the living area and bedroom was a dresser with a TV on top. The TV could be rotated to watch it in the bedroom or living room depending on where you were.
One downside of the TV was that our Fire TV Stick didn’t work with it which meant that we were stuck with the somewhat limited number of channels the hotel offered. It was a Smart TV though, so we were able to log in to Netflix and watch other stuff that way.
Kitchen
As mentioned earlier, every suite at Residence Inn hotels has a full kitchen. This includes a full-sized fridge-freezer, dishwasher, microwave and double stove-top.
The cupboards and drawers had cookware, plates, dishes, silverware, cooking utensils, etc.
I’ve a feeling the person who cleaned our room was somewhat short because even though the entire suite initially appeared clean, the top of the fridge was covered in what we think was cat fur from a previous four-legged guest.
Bedroom
Our room had a king bed which was nice and comfortable. The bedside lamps above the bed each had a power outlet included which made it easier to charge our phones at night.
The dresser which the TV was on had seen better days, but the drawers still opened fine.
The room’s closet had a luggage rack, iron and ironing board, as well as a pillow and bedding for the sleeper sofa.
Bathroom
One negative feature of the suite’s layout is that the bathroom sink was opposite the closet in the main bedroom area. That meant that using the sink at night had to be done by the light of my phone so as not to wake up Shae.
The bathroom itself had a bathtub and shower; the shower’s water pressure was perfectly fine.
Rather than having small bottles of toiletries, there were larger bottles of shampoo, conditioner and body wash mounted to the wall.
Breakfast
The Embassy Suites Hampton Convention Center was the first hotel we’d stayed at since COVID hit which offered a hot breakfast. The Residence Inn Roanoke Airport was the second, so it was nice getting to have a little more variety each day.
Breakfast was served from 7-9 am during the week and 7-10 am at the weekend. There were a couple of different hot options available each day – usually scrambled egg and a meat option. These were served by one of the hotel’s employees and handed over in a to-go box so you could eat it back in your room rather than in the dining area like you might during normal times.
There was a good selection of other items which you could pick and choose from yourself seeing as everything was individually packaged.
There was also a coffee and tea station which was out in the main lobby area opposite the front desk. I think this was only available during breakfast hours, but I might be wrong on that. We didn’t often walk through the lobby as there was a side door which was closer to our room on the first floor, so it might be that tea and coffee was available all day.
Amenities
The Residence Inn hotel brand is targeted at people booking an extended stay, so they tend to have more amenities than some other hotel brands to cater for that need.
For example, there’s an outdoor sports court, although this one was a little smaller than some at other Residence Inn properties we’ve stayed at.
Something the Residence Inn Roanoke Airport had which I don’t remember seeing at any other properties though was a billiards room.
There was an outdoor swimming pool and whirlpool, although it was closed for the season as we visited in October. It looked like a fairly good-sized pool with lots of space around it for families to hang out in the summer.
Continuing the exercise theme, the hotel has a fitness room with a few pieces of equipment and weights. Due to COVID, you had to make a reservation to use the fitness room which I was impressed by, as some other hotels we’ve stayed at haven’t had any kind of restrictions.
There’s an outdoor seating area with a firepit and grill for guests can use.
There’s also an alcove at the entrance of the hotel where you can hang out as a group if you want, although COVID meant there was rarely anyone hanging out in here.
The lobby/breakfast area had a business center which consisted of a computer and printer.
If you don’t want to go out to the grocery store, there’s a pantry area where you could buy snacks, drinks, frozen foods, toiletries and even wine.
The hotel has a guest laundry area with washers and dryers, but apparently I forgot to take photos of that. It cost $2.50 for a light wash, $2.75 for a medium wash and $3 for a heavy wash. That’s a little more expensive than some other hotels charge, but it’s far more convenient than taking your clothes to a laundromat.
Pet Policy
The Residence Inn Roanoke Airport is a pet-friendly hotel. They allow up to two pets per room which have to weigh under 50 lbs. Their pet fee is $100 per stay and tax is charged on top of that, so it came out to $105.30 at the time of our stay. That’s fairly steep if you’re only staying one or two nights, but it wasn’t too bad for us seeing as we were staying for a couple of weeks.
There’s a pet walking area next to the hotel and a few grassy areas. The hotel is next to a Courtyard hotel (another Marriott brand) and I’d sometimes walk Truffles around their property too to get more space. There are sidewalks on the other side of the road from the hotel, so you can take a walk a little further afield if you want.
Roanoke is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so there’s lots of pet-friendly hiking nearby, such as McAfee Knob and the Mill Mountain Star trail.
The city also has a couple of dog parks. We took Truffles to Highland Dog Park one day, but unfortunately it started raining on our way there. We decided to brave the elements, but it wasn’t Truffles’s best experience.
COVID-19
Overall, the Residence Inn Roanoke Airport seemed to deal with COVID very well. The lobby was set up to ensure safe interactions for both guests and staff and it was good that you had to make a reservation to use the fitness room.
I was also pleased that they’d managed to find a way to provide a more comprehensive breakfast offering than many other hotels, including a couple of hot options each morning.
When checking in, we were provided with the following information card listing the hotel’s COVID-related policies and changes.
Service
We didn’t really interact much with the staff other than the occasional days where we got breakfast or needed something from the front desk. They were all friendly enough, but there wasn’t anything memorable service-wise – good or bad.
Wi-Fi
What wasn’t good was their Wi-Fi. It was awful to the point of being non-existent and that’s no exaggeration. My laptop could connect to the Wi-Fi, but it had the weakest possible signal, so weak that nothing would load online.
At first I attributed that to our location towards the end of the hotel, although that wouldn’t even be a good excuse as all guests should have access to the internet, not just those lucky enough to have a room with a better signal.
I’m not convinced that any room had a better signal though. I tried having a Zoom meeting outside in the outdoor seating area seeing as that’s in the center of the property. There was still no signal though, so I wasn’t able to attend the meeting.
As a result, I had to rely on my phone as a hotspot for the first part of our stay. Unfortunately I used so much data that Google Fi throttled my data after a few days which made everything incredibly slow and unusable, much like the hotel’s internet.
There was a partial workaround. Our suite had an ethernet outlet in the wall and we travel with an ethernet cable. That meant we could connect to the internet, but the speed was still incredibly dodgy at times. Even when it did work, it didn’t solve all our problems; Shae and I both work online, but only one ethernet connection meant only one of us could work at a time. Shae teaches online and so she’d often need to use it for her classes, but she sometimes had to use her phone as a hotspot for the video classes as the hotel’s internet was so poor that it would cut out.
It was incredibly frustrating having to deal with this for two weeks, so we were relieved when it came time to check out.
Check-In & Check-Out Times
The check-in time at the Residence Inn Roanoke Airport is 3pm and check-out is at 12pm.
Location
As you might expect from its name, the hotel is only a couple of miles from Roanoke-Blacksburg Regional Airport and so only takes about five minutes to get there. It’s only a mile or two from Valley View Mall which has an abundance of stores and restaurants and is only about five miles from downtown Roanoke.
It’s therefore in a pretty convenient location if you have your own car. If you don’t have a car, there are a couple of fast food restaurants within walking distance.
The hotel helpfully provides print-offs of restaurants in both the local area and in downtown Roanoke.
Parking
The Residence Inn Roanoke Airport offers free parking for guests. The parking lot always seemed fairly busy, but we never had a problem finding a space.
Cost
We booked this hotel because we managed to get such a good rate on it. Its initial cost was $87.50 per night including tax which isn’t a bad price, but we’d likely have gone with the Hyatt Place Roanoke using points as that would’ve been better value.
However, I managed to find a slightly cheaper rate on Hotels.com. I therefore booked our stay directly with Marriott and submitted a Best Rate Guarantee claim. By doing this, Marriott matched the Hotels.com rate and then gave us an additional 25% discount. That meant our rate got reduced to $64.29 per night including tax. Paying less than $65 per night for a suite with a kitchen was too good to pass up at the time, although the Wi-Fi situation makes me wish we had passed it up.
If we’d redeemed Marriott Bonvoy points for the stay, it would’ve cost an average of 16,346 points per night. That would’ve been a poor use of points with the original $87.50 cost and so would’ve been an even worse redemption given the $64.29 rate we ended up with.
I booked our stay after clicking through to Marriott’s website from TopCashback. They were offering 3% cashback for Marriott stays, so we should be getting $22.12 cashback (that figure is based on the pre-tax room rate).
Points Earned
We earned 9,454 points for our stay. I paid with a Marriott credit card which earns 6x points per dollar on paid stays, so that earned us an additional 5,646 points.
Final Thoughts
The Residence Inn Roanoke Airport is a decent hotel with one exception – their Wi-Fi. If it wasn’t for that, I’d be happy staying at their property again.
However, it was such a truly miserable experience for both me and Shae to try working online for two weeks with only one of us being able to be connected via the ethernet cable (which itself had poor connectivity and speed) that there’s simply no way I’d book a stay at this hotel again unless I knew for sure that they’d sorted the internet situation out.
Truffles Approval Rating
Truffles gives this hotel three paws out of four – pawsome. There’s an OK amount of grass around the property and it was possible to take her for walks further afield. The pet fee is fairly high though, especially if you were to only stay one or two nights.
Our Rating
Room = 4.5 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 2.5 / 5 (n.b. This is marked down significantly due to the Wi-Fi situation; the other amenities are good though)
Food = 4.6 / 5
Location = 4.1 / 5
Service = 4.0 / 5
Dealing With COVID-19 (A new – hopefully temporary – category for our hotel reviews) = 4.6 / 5
Overall Value = 4.6 / 5
Total = 4.13/5 (This seems a fair score, because it’s a good hotel if it weren’t for the awful internet)
Address
Residence Inn, 3305 Ordway Dr NW, Roanoke, VA 24017
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