Extended Stay America – Austin – Downtown – 6th St.

Just don’t! There is not enough time (for me to write much less for you to read) to list how wrong this property was!
Pro: a roof over our heads
Cons: towels paper thin, if you want new ones, you must embark on a walk of shame and carry your soiled, wet, paper thin towels out your door, down the hall, onto an elevator while other patron stare in horror, exit the elevator, wait in the line for access to an attendant at the front desk with other patrons trying to check in/​out (also staring in horror), finally hand the wet mess to an attendant, request the number of replacement paper thin towels, and proceed back to your room! You are required to do this EVERY time you need fresh towels. Oh, and NO cleaning services during your stay.
Bottom line, there are a number of other comparably priced hotels within blocks of this hotel that are cleaner, have a much better breakfast option AND clean towels that are replenished when your room is CLEANED.
Do reverse of Nike — JUST DON’T DO IT!

I recently stayed here for Labor Day weekend.
The hotel location is pretty good. It also has plenty of free parking. But the room was dirty, no housekeeping service, we ran out of towels and I had to go get them from the front desk, which the staff was very nice.
The kitchen had no dishes. All you get is two little rinse plastic cups, one in the bathroom and one in the kitchen.
The place smelled kinda weird.
And what hotel doesn’t have an ice machine. (the ice trays in the fridge were empty)
The free breakfast they advertised is only
Cereal bars, fruit and coffee.
Not coming back to this hotel.

Towels felt like sand paper on my skin. They were understaffed so getting anything like extra «towels» or kitchen supplies took forever. Way overpriced for what you get.

We stayed here for one night only and this will be the only time we ever stay here. We had a total of 4 rooms and 2 of them were not clean. One of our rooms had small roaches and hair in between the sheets. The other room was dirty when we checked in. We informed the front desk and they said they would have it cleaned. We left for our event thinking it would get taken care of. Wrong! We returned to find it in the exact same condition. We called the front desk and they told us sorry but that they didn’t have 24hr maid service. We ended up having to share a room. In the morning we were told by the day staff that we should have informed the of the situation. WE HAD INFORMED THEM! At checkout time we again explained the situation and requested a refund for the room we were unable to use plus we wanted to be sure we were not charged for anything extra on our credit cards. We were assured that no charges were applied to our cards. A few minutes after leaving we checked our credit card accounts and found that we HAD been charged extra for the room we were never able to use! The day manager was horrible. She blamed the entire situation on the poor guy that had checked us in. Needless to say it was a huge mess. We spent over 45 minutes trying to get the credit card situation cleared up. So in finishing this review I will never stay at this hotel again and will make sure that I let friends and family know what a horrible experience we had at this hotel.

While this hotel was obviously refurbished not so long ago, it’s already beginning to show signs of wear. Stains on the carpet, nasty bathtub. My main gripe is that they don’t offer much of anything in the way of amenities. No fitness room, no hot breakfast (breakfast is a granola bar or packaged muffin), they give you a full kitchenette but there aren’t any dishes in it, they don’t even provide a coffee maker. The one redeeming quality is the location. It’s close enough to downtown that it’s easily walked.

In February, I completed a survey of the motel detailing my negative experience, particularly how dirty it was including mold and hand prints appearing to be made from flour. The general manager wrote me to apologize and promised a free night stay. However, when I responded, as requested in the email, I never heard back and never got the certificate. I wrote again after a month thinking it may have gotten lost in the mail or something and still received no response.
Not only was this place dirty, but they are also liars. Disappointing.
Here is the email:
Dear Tenille,
Thank you for choosing Extended Stay Hotels and for taking the time to provide feedback about your experience. We use feedback, such as yours, to continuously make changes to our brand to improve our guest’s experience.
I would like to start by apologizing to you for not meeting your expectations. We strive to provide all our guests with a comfortable, «home away from home» experience. I am sorry we failed at that mission. We will take your comments and coach our team to provide better service in the future.
I hope you will give our hotel and company a chance to prove that your unsatisfactory experience was an exception. I would like to offer one «Be Our Guest» certificate (s) valid for a free night stay at any of our hotels (pending availability). Please respond with your mailing address and I will send the certificate to you.
Again, thank you for contacting Extended Stay Hotels and if I can be of assistance to you, please contact me directly at 512.457.9994.
Sincerely,
Zina Ramirez
General Manager
512.457.9994

The only saving grace for this place is its location. Smelly rooms, poor service, impolite staff, no basic hotel comforts… honestly I’ve been to better hotels in the bush in 3^rd world countries. If at all posible avoid this hotel and pick some place better.

Omg this place is a shit hole. 2 steps better than a motel you take a gas station hooker.
Disgusting fridge bathroom, towels pillows. BTW pubic hair by the tollette sink and I’m sure everywhere… You can bring a street walker here.
The hell with this place. Depressing and smelly.

This is a good place to stay if you are doing work at Whole Foods — its the perfect walking distance. The rooms are clean for the most part, but out of four one did smell a bit of mold and urine. The staff is friendly. Its a no frills hotel and if you are OK with that, then this is a good choice. My biggest gripe? The incredibly slow wireless internet speeds (at least on the 4^th floor). I measured 0.8 Mbs download and 0.4 Mbs upload speeds. This speed is pretty much going back to the old acoustic modems the 90’s. Why so slow? because they want you to pay to upgrade to a faster speed. Well, why even bother offering «free» internet when its so slow its almost unusable? Internet speed is why I did not give this place 4 stars. I will keep coming here because you can’t beat the location, but I may tire of it soon and go back to a real hotel.
5÷12÷15 Update — I think I’m done with Extended Stay for a while. My room this week on the 3^rd floor is exceptionally dirty & smelly. The fridge has rust all over the front and I really wonder now how much effort they put into cleaning this place. Also, there is NO water to be had. They don’t have it at the front desk or provide it in the rooms and the single vending machine was out of bottled water. There is no convenience store nearby. So that does it for me, I have to have bottled water wherever I stay. Off to a real hotel next week…
5÷20÷15 — By way of comparison, I’m staying at the Marrott Courtyard in Austin this week and their wireless speeds are excellent: nearly 10Mbs upload and download. Shame on you Extended Stay America.

PROs:
— Location (downtown and within walking distance to most everything)
— Free Parking
— Free WiFi
— Free cold breakfast (granola bars, fruit, muffins, instant oatmeal, coffee/​tea)
— Inexpensive (but only in comparison to other downtown lodging options)
— Full-​sized fridge, microwave, cupboards, sink
— Staff (friendly, accommodating)
CONs:
— found multiple live roaches in our first room (clerk was very apologetic and immediately moved us to another room)
— lobby/​halls/​rooms have a «used» appearance to them and could probably use some touching up
NOTE: I would have awarded 5 stars had it not been for the roaches.

Close to downtown. Great view. Sound proof windows. Free parking. Free grab and go breakfast. Free wifi. Kitchen and fridge in room. Rooms are clean.
This hotel is inexpensive and provides basic needs for a quick stay. We might stay here again for a quick trip to downtown. Beds aren’t the most comfortable and coffee is awful– but hey– we downtown!

DO NOT SPEND YOUR MONEY HERE. We booked this as a secret hotel in hotwire and totally regret it. All the towels in our room had stains on it. The comforter on our bed… stains on it. Pillow cases… you guessed it, stains. The heater doesn’t work and it’s a really cold night. We got a queen bed for two people. No dishes or anything in the «kitchen». Housekeeping came into our room but didn’t clean or bring any towels. Front desk is rude every time we call down for anything. But they are so nice and friendly with one another. Went downstairs at about 11 at night and they seem to be having a little get together in the break room but yet… the hotel is supposedly closed?! The water in the sink and shower smelled so bad when it’s running. Saw people checking in and wanted to warn them not to stay here but didn’t. Only good perk is the free parking and location but not even worth anything.

First thing is first: I paid $ 191 per night for 3 nights (total $ 573). I did not expect a five star luxury hotel or anything close to it, I expected a 3 star hotel based on Unilocal and Tripadvisor. This hotel is one star.
1. No hot water. Front desk was zero help.
2. Moldy. There was MOLD in the shower, but thankfully I was only there for about 1 minute every day because cold showers suck.
3. Rude. The front desk staff (except for one guy) was incompetent. I asked for extra rough scratchy towels because I was freezing from the cold shower and they told me they only had 1 person working so I had to go get them myself, and they only had 2.
4. Gross. The hallways smell like dog pee and old vodka.
5. Dirty. There was one dirty plate in the kitchenette. Yes, we got ONE plate for food, and it was dirty.
6. Dirty, again. The sheets has faint stains, I won’t go into detail because I couldn’t figure out what kind of stains they were.
Basically, the only pro to this hotel is that the parking is easy, free, and plentiful. If god forbid I ever have to come back, I will make sure to rent a really nice car and just sleep in the parking lot.

I am disappointed in this hotel. I guess you get what you pay for, right? My husband and I stayed here when we came down to go to some concerts. It was conveniently right by the concert venue and within our budget. The second night we were there we called downstairs for an extra pillow. The person who answered said they were out of pillows and the hotel was closed for the night. What? Ran out of pillows? I’m shocked they don’t keep extras on hand. We were finally able to get one the next night, luckily.
We didn’t get any room cleaning which is unfortunate but, whatever. The kicker to that long weekend was we kept getting locked out of our room. We had to go down a few times to have them reset our key card and the people are the front desk don’t even ask for ID or anything. So essentially strangers could have said they were in our room and then broke in and stole all our belongings. The hotel in itself was also dirty. It looked like no one ever vacuumed. Just overall a disappointment. If you don’t have any expectations then this is the right hotel for you.

This place is a complete rip-​off. They pulled the old bait-​n-​switch on me and I never saw it coming.
When I booked my reservation, I specifically checked «two adults.» One for me and one for my friend who came to Austin with me.
This has always meant two beds in every hotel I’ve stayed at. If there was another box I could check that would say «2 beds,» I would have checked that but two adults has always meant two beds.
I get to the front desk and the front desk guy (Jacob) gives me a room with a queen sized bed.
He proceeded to tell me that I should have called ahead if I wanted two beds but that I can upgrade for $ 11.00!
Hum…it’s not the money. That $ 11.00 wont break me. It’s the principal that disturbs me. I hate being nickeled and dined and that’s exactly what happened.
Nothing the guy said made any sense. He said that according the the «fine print,» they had the right to put me in a one-​bed room if I didn’t call ahead.
They do the same thing with Internet. It’s supposedly «free,» but they make it impeccably slow if you don’t pay an additional $ 4.00.
I’m done with Extended Stay, especially this location. They used to be really good but frankly, they’ve been on a steady decline for a while now. This was just icing on the cake. I’m paying extra and going to Double Tree.

Overview:
Like its name implies, Extended Stay America in downtown Austin is basically a studio apartment with the basics you would need to survive for a few weeks. I would say it’s around the level of a 2-​star-​class hotel. I booked it for a one night stay (yes, I know it sounds stupid) through Hotwire’s mystery deals.
The Room:
Non-​central air conditioning, oh-​so-​slightly dirty feel to the floors, and an overly large bathroom door that swings outwards towards the kitchen immediately caught my attention when I walked in but overall I think it’s a great value if you’re smart about buying food from supermarkets and grocery stores. See the picture below for the mini-​kitchen.
The Bathroom:
Very normal, with enough counter space for your junk.
Conclusions:
For the cost of the room, I think this Extended Stay American in Austin is a great deal, but I disagree with some of the design choices, and wish the heating was central or at least quieter. While it is not a classy place, it is a practical place that I would recommend to a couple spending more than a week in the Austin area, perhaps to find housing or a job downtown.

I stayed here for an entire week while I was in Austin for business and I was pretty satisfied and would probably stay here in the future if I had the choice.
The location is pretty solid – it’s just a bit west of Congress and within walking distance to a ton of local bars, Whole Foods, and other food options. Since it’s in a solid area of downtown, there are always a ton of Ubers around the area in case you want to get out of town.
The room was pretty clean and really, really spacious. It was stocked with an entire kitchen of stuff so if one wanted to save money, they could easily have cooked all their meals in house. The bed was comfy, sheets were clean, and the bathroom was pretty spacious as well.
Since I stayed a whole week, I didn’t get housekeeping service but it wasn’t that hard to just stop by the front desk and ask for whatever I needed. They also have a grab and go complimentary breakfast thing – packaged muffins, granola bars, and something as well as coffee/​hot chocolate/​oatmeal. If you’re not too picky, it’s pretty good. Wifi is free as well, a little slow, but usable if you want to do work and reply to emails.
Front desk was always really nice and helpful.
tldr; solid experience, would recommend

Room was dirty, and the excuse was that temps were now doing the cleaning. No conditioner either.
We got to breakfast a few minutes before it ended at 9:30 and there was no coffee left. The woman on duty grumbled about making more for us and instead took just as long to find an in-​room coffee pot for us to make our own. And meanwhile she was talking rudely about us with anther staff member… Within earshot of us too! This is no way for a hospitality business to treat customers.
Blessed and Macy at the front desk were sweet and the location was central, but everyone else and everything else about this hotel left us with a terrible experience. I can’t believe we paid almost $ 200 for this!

The room was clean. Other than a fire on the main floor, the facilities were great.
Our room was also given away to two other groups during our stay. My girlfriend and I – and the people who walked in on us – we’re not amused.
When I contacted the hotel after our stay, the blame was credited to «an honest mistake» by an undertrained employee.
The manager who responded to my complaint offered a free night to compensate for the mishaps, but then never responded again to my emails.
Even chalked up to honest mistakes, I wasn’t impressed with the experience offered.

I really like this place. We have stayed here twice while in Austin for the weekend. They usually have really good prices and you can bring your dog. Parking is super easy and convenient and it is right in a great area. I have decided it like the farther west side of 6^th street, it is a lot more laid back and has lots of great patio bars.
This is not a fancy hotel and they don’t have pool or anything, but it has location and convenience.