Very functional hotel with basic breakfast and a nice quiet park nearby, 20 minutes from Downtown Austin.
I stayed in both a basic room with a queen bed, and a suite (they turned out to be identical), around the Texas Eclipse in April 2024.
Pros:
* Even the most basic room is very functional: desk and ergonomic chair for computer work, mini-fridge, microwave, couch, comfortable bed
* Basic breakfast until 9am: microwaveable burritos and biscuits, hard boiled eggs, milk and cereal, apples, oranges, coffee, juice
* Very helpful staff (held onto my luggage, received packages, printed labels, extended my reservation several times)
* Nice quiet park to walk or jog in, 3 minutes away by foot (the MetCenter Hike & Bike trail). Hardly anybody there every time I went.
* Small fitness room with 3 cardio machines
* $8 shuttle service to the airport, plus free pickup from the airport
* The elevator now works
Cons:
* The WiFi was extremely fast in the lobby, but on the 3rd floor - unstable, and would disconnect briefly several times per hour. Like most other hotels, WiFi also kicks you out 2+ times a day, and you have to login (with the same password). I don't really get the point of this, and if the logout happens during a video call, you're screwed until you reconnect 💥, OR if you're on your phone, it goes on data and chews up bandwidth to handle the video. Microtel, please stop this dumb practice.
* The TV's WiFi worked only on day one (so other devices could connect and cast to it), and never since then.
* The area doesn't have anything interesting within a 5-minute walk, but is a ~15-minute Uber ride to downtown Austin. Ubers take ~5 minutes to arrive. So consider 20 minutes to get to Downtown.
* Walls aren't the thickest so I could hear the neighbors bumping things into them, but overall both rooms were quiet.
* The mattress was a tiny bit squeaky
* Breakfast ends at 9am. Other places have breakfast until 10am.
* The suite may be slightly bigger but I didn't see ANY advantage vs. the basic room. Really not worth the price difference. Exactly the same layout and furniture. Not sure why they charge more for it.
