We have stayed at this Comfort Inn, in Eureka Springs many times and have always been completely satisfied. Whenever we traveled to Eureka Springs, we always booked our room there and did not look for any other motel. That motel was always clean, had a delicious breakfast, and most importantly accepted dogs. Their policy is pets must stay in smoking rooms. On previous trips, that was not a problem. Their rooms were always clean and did not smell of smoke. In May 2008, this was not the case. When we opened the door to the room, we were overwhelmed by the strong stench of stale smoke. We slept in that room the first night. By morning, we were have nasal and sinus problems. Our dogs were sneezing and having breathing difficulty. I told the front desk person and she gave me an old air cleaning machine. We used it and it helped some, but it was still smoky smelling. The first morning the toilet backed up. We told the front desk person and they had to call maintenance. We left the motel for a few hours. When we returned, the room smelled of sewage and the toilet was apart. The front desk person told us they had to call a plumber, so we would have to move our room. We lost half a day of our vacation between dealing with the backed up toilet and having to relocate to another room. The other room was also a smoking room because the management will not allow pets in a non-smoking room. The second room had the same musty stench of smoke. After this horrible experience, we elected to move out of this motel earlier than planned. When we checked out, we requested a one night's compensation for our inconvience. The front desk person telephoned the owner for approval to remove one night from our bill. This seemed reasonable for one night of our three nights stay. The owner refused based on the fact that they were able to supply us with another room. They instead gave us a $6 per night discount. Their lack of concern for our inconvience and their poor maintenance and housekeeping added to our dissatisfaction.
A couple of other noteworthy issues:
We had requested, far in advance, a ground floor room and had even called that day to secure that type room. When we checked in, the man at the front desk, who was chewy a wad of tobacco and spitting in a cup while speaking to us, told us that type room was not available and we would be on the 3rd floor. This is very inconvient when you are traveling with pets. We had stayed at this motel on other trips and were pleased. We would normally overlook this one instance and consider staying there on our next trip. However, the callousness of management in dealing with our problems and their unyielding insistance on placing pets in a poorly maintained smoking room is totally unacceptable and we would never consider returning to this facility with it's current ownership and management. We filed a complaint with Choice Hotels and received a letter from the management of that motel which offered nothing to satisfy us in any way. Ultimately, Choice Hotels has offered us a coupon towards a stay at any of their hotels. If you are unfortunate enough to stay at this hotel and have a bad experience, then be sure to report it to Choice Hotels as they will monitor customer feedback for each location.