Candlewood Suites - Houston Westchase

Almost a great place

Admittedly, I'm probably a little more negative than I should be about this place because I become very claustrophobic whenever I'm back in Houston. The fact that I had a hard time finding it didn't help my feelings towards it.

Candlewood Suites is set up for someone wanting to spend several days to a week at one location, and it has some good amenities for living. Each room has a microwave, a two-burner stove, a full-sized refrigerator, and cupboards full of dishes. If one wanted to prepare food, these rooms are set up to do so. Rather than having a set selection of food in the room, the motel has a little grocery room where guests can buy food and some other items on an "honor bar" basis. They have pretty good selection and pretty good prices. They also have a reasonably well-equipped exercise room, but I arrived too late to use it. Another nice feature is a larger bar of soap than I find in most motels. It's nice taking a shower with a bigger bar of soap.

Unfortunately, the Candlewood at Westchase in Houston didn't quite make it as the nice place that it could almost be. First, it was hard to find and is not within walking distance of anything helpful. I like being able to walk quickly to at least one restaurant from a hotel/motel. I guess some places might have been in "walking distance" but they weren't convenient. Secondly, things didn't work as well as they should. They gave me one room with a microwave that didn't work. When I arrive late and tired, I have little tolerance for non-functional stuff. They moved me to another room, but the carousel on that microwave didn't work and made a loud bumping noise.

The alarm clock in the room was different from any that I had seen. It was a nice alarm clock, and they are probably available in many places. However, I'd never seen one, wasn't entirely sure that I had set it correctly, and just missed the familiarity of something like the ones I use at home and in most motels. When I'm traveling on business, I prefer the tried and true.

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Unique Quality: The cable offerings were likewise strange. They had two or three HBO channels and only one ESPN. The thought of getting more HBO channels than ESPN channels just seems silly to me. To make matters worse, they didn't have FOX News, and the first requirement for a motel to have a good cable system is to have FOX News. They didn't have the usual range of Discovery/History type channels. They have E!, but I was too tired to look for Brooke Burk.

I had a better rate because I was spending the next day in meetings at a local engineering company. I think the normal rates are right around $80 a night for the kind of room that I had.

The Candlewood is a place that was almost really nice. They have the right idea and most of the right stuff. If they could do better on execution and they'd dump HBO for more sports and FOX News, they'd have something really good.