Gatlinburg —Hotel Review

The Brookside Lodge

I love booking our hotel reservations with Hotels.com. We have a couple of things that we always put in the filters, the star rating, and breakfast included. We are pretty simple people and don’t expect a whole lot, though that is something that is changing. I know after this last vacation I am becoming more picky when it comes to where we will stay.

The Brookside had a 3-star rating on Hotels.com, which is the minimum star rating that we look for, and included a hot breakfast. We start my journey through the site, by looking for those qualities and then checking the customer reviews. The reviews were great so the next thing we look at are the pictures of the location. Some of the pictures were not accurate for this location. We, unfortunately, didn't take any pictures, this is definitely something that we will start doing for future reference.

On the day of our arrival, we received a courtesy call, which was pleasant. The lady was letting us know that our room was ready for us if we were interested in checking in early. We were so excited for this stay and that phone call honestly only heightened our expectations.

We arrived at the location, which wasn’t too hard to find. The staff at check-in was polite, then we got to the room. That is when things really start to get messy. We reserved a room with a king-size bed and a roll-away away would be available, the room was smaller than what we expected (from what we saw in the pictures), and no roll-away bed would fit. I called the front desk and they were accommodating and wanted to change our room to something with more space. That was great, especially without charging us more. However, that is when things get even messier.

The front desk clerk meets us to go look at another room. At first glance, the room was great. There was more space and 2 beds, we were definitely happy with the upgrade, that is until we started getting unpacked and really checking things out. We walked out onto the balcony and realized that the door had not been locked. The window that was next to the door was opened and we were not able to close it. The window frame appeared to have been forced open and bent, so it would not close properly. The main door to go into the room also was not auto-locking as it was supposed to do. This time we went to the front desk in person. At this point, we are frustrated and losing hope.

While at the front desk, the clerk told us that they had one other room, but it was on the second floor. We were not happy about that idea at all. We had not seen an elevator and was not about to be climbing stairs with our luggage. She told us that there was an elevator, so we asked her if we could walk through the room before changing rooms again. We were very weary of our stay at that point.

We get to the 3rd room, and this time we check all of the doors and the window first. Again this room was a double queen bed, with a balcony that overlooked the creak. We decided that this room would be acceptable for our stay even though the bathroom door wouldn’t close completely and if you got it to close all the way, you didn’t know if you would get it back open. Not a situation we wanted to be in, so of course we just had to be extra mindful of one another during our stay.

The rest of our stay at The Brookside Lodge was pleasant enough. The room served its purpose for us, giving us a comfortable bed to sleep and a roof over our heads. It didn’t have any unpleasant odors and it wasn’t dirty.

In conclusion, you might ask if we would stay there again and that would be a definite no. I did call Hotels.com after we returned home and was given a portion refund to credit for our next booking even though the location claims we never reported the issues. I was also told by the Hotels.com rep that in the future to always call in at the time of the issues so that they can intervene and ensure that we have the best possible experience.