Comfortable Rooms on Houston's Westside Energy Corridor
Written: Jun 23 '08
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: comfy rooms, nice pool, modern hotel, spacious atrium
Cons: far from downtown
The Bottom Line: I slept like a baby!
|
|
|
| mrkstvns's Full Review: Omni Houston Hotel Westside |
I was looking for a nice hotel in Houston at an affordable price, and ended up snagging a very good weekend getaway deal at the Omni Westside. The weekend went off without a hitch (aside from some rain on our Saturday afternoon barbecue --- but hotel factors had nothing to do with that). It's a fairly large, modern hotel with good facilities for a family weekend getaway and super nice guest rooms.
Hotel Facilities
The Omni Westside evidently does quite the event business. They've got an impressive array of ballrooms and meeting rooms on the ground and second floors, and it's obvious that this is a hotel that really focuses on weddings and business events. Like most Omni properties, the leisure amenities are first rate and really make the hotel an enjoyable place to stay and a property that should be preferred over other, lesser hotels that charge similar rates. The hotel's pool is excellent --- large, heated for year-round use, and with a wide, inviting deck chock full of lounge chairs and poolside tables. Kudos to Omni for providing excellent food and drink service by the pool as well, and for having reasonable hours with early opening and late closing times. Omni does it right!
Their fitness center is big too, and it looked clean, bright, and inviting.
The parking is a bit inconvenient, since the 2-story garage and surface lots are all located at the back of the property, so overnight guests need to walk through the meeting room acreage to reach the elevators to guest rooms. The parking lots seem big at first glance, but considering the hotel's expansive event space, it's often inadequate when there's a big wedding or reunion happening on a busy night (as I discovered when I had to cruise the lot at 10pm last Saturday, on the hunt for the elusive open parking spot).
Service is okay. The front desk staff were friendly enough, but the i's aren't dotted and t's aren't crossed here, like they are at the Omni Houston over near the Galleria. I didn't see bellmen nor doormen when I entered the hotel, and the hotel seemed to lack the effusive grace of Houston's other Omni property.
Guest Rooms
Wahoo! Now THIS is one spacious hotel room! I love the upscale decor, the quietness of the room, and it's thoughtfully equipped feeling. Love having a big easy chair, love having the fully stocked mini-bar, love having a huge flat-screen plasma TV. The channel selection even seems a bit better than your usual Hilton or Holiday Inn because there's at least important things like Cartoon Network and Univision. Still no good music channels, but hotel cable will be hotel cable, and it will be a dismal selection. Such is life in these times of corporate mediocrity.
The king size bed is nicely firm, and I love the thick, warm comforter (always a plus on these frigid 92 degree Houston nights!) Love having a real-live closet instead of some tacky rack on the wall, and love opening the door to find a clean terry cloth robe for my after-shower pleasure. Of course there's a coffee maker in the room, and the Wolfgang Puck coffee is actually pretty darn good for a prepack.
I love the spacious work desk with the nice hard glass surface, and even better, I love flipping on my laptop and finding FREE internet. Yahoo! (literally).
Food and Drink
Eats and drinks are pretty good at this hotel. They do a great Sunday brunch spread, their "Cafe on the Lake" is casual and fun (though there's no lake, it's just indoor pools with tropical fish and plants in an open atrium setting). The quality is generally good and the feeling upscale --- it's what you'd expect in a four-star hotel dining room. I ordered their poblano corn chowder and a crusted salmon. The chowder was decent enough, but lacked intensity and pizzazz --- it could have used more poblano (ideally charred), and the crusted salmon was served with an innocuous light sauce that seemed to taste of nothing. It was blander than I'd have liked, and I know next time to go offsite for my food. On the plus side, prices were quite reasonable, I thought. My chowder was $5 and the salmon $19 --- not out of line with what I'd have paid in a decent downtown restaurant.
Location
The hotel's location is mediocre. It's in a suburban type area where many oil and gas companies have high-rise office towers. It's somewhat convenient for motorists because it's right on Interstate 10 at the Eldridge Parkway exit. That's a double-edge sword these days because I-10 has been under perpetual destruction the last couple years and traffic in the area is often a mess.
I don't consider it a particularly good location though because its far from any points of scenic interest or any interesting parts of town. The location is 16 miles west of downtown and it's more than a half hour drive to either Bush Intercontinental or Hobby airport. If you have business or friends on the west side, it's a decent choice, otherwise, I think the downtown and Galleria area hotels have better locations.
Bottom Line
The Omni Houston Westside is a good, comfortable hotel. It's got impressive facilities, and first-rate guest rooms. I don't care for the somewhat remote location of this property, and I find that the service levels, while better than your typical chain hotel, are still below that of true 5-star hotels and that service is not as polished as at the nearby Omni Houston, which in my opinion, is the better of the two Houston-area Omni properties. Still, a good stay overall, and an excellent value for the money. I recommend this hotel and will likely stay here again.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
mrkstvns
|
 in Hotels & Travel |
 in Hotels & Travel |
 - Top 50 |
|
Location: Lone Star State
Reviews written: 1457
Trusted by: 957 members
About Me:
I'm all about exciting latin American travel, hot latin music, and hearty robust beers.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2008 Shopping.com, Inc.