Fine hotel of its type; fitness room needs attention
Over the years I've found that the Holiday Inn Express & Suites chain strikes a good balance of service, amenities and value. If you're comfortable with this equation, the Sunset Valley HIE&S is a very good place to stay when visiting Austin. This otherwise-glowing recommendation is tarnished by only one minor and one major reservation, which I discuss below.
Three members of my family needed a place to stay while visiting our daughter in South Austin, and this property is the closest major hotel to her home off Lamar Boulevard. The hotel is not actually in Austin; Sunset Valley is a small town nestled inside Austin proper. Still, it was only about a six minute drive to her place, which worked out very well for the various back-and-forths during our 11-day stay.
Though convenient to South Austin, the hotel's location is also the minor reservation mentioned above. It sits on the Route 290 West service road. If you're a walker, like my wife, the immediate vicinity isn't hospitable for a stroll, although there are ample sidewalks and the area is not dangerous. However, if you walk (or drive) to the large mall on Brodie Lane adjacent to the Route 290 East service road, you'll find a lovely landscaped walking trail that runs alongside the mall through a lightly wooded area and from there into the Sunset Valley Nature Area and an additional two miles of trails.
Our room was a spacious, U-shaped three-person suite which perfectly met our needs. The entryway/foyer was lined with a microwave, fridge, kitchen counter and small sink. The foyer led into a sitting area with two tables of varying heights. Turn left, and you pass through the secondary sleeping area that is furnished with a convertible sofa, coffee table, armoire and TV. Continue past a dividing half-wall and you're into the master bedroom area in the second leg of the "U," with its own furnishings and TV. There's enough open space in the foyer to put down two yoga mats. The suite was tastefully decorated, in very good condition (other than a large stain on the carpet), and everything worked: no slow drains, inoperable light fixtures, or the like. There was no noise from the adjoining room. Housekeeping was top-notch and is available 'til 4:00 p.m. daily. There were plenty of electrical outlets, although the outlet multiplier I brought along gave me more flexibility with respect to what got plugged in where. Be aware that that there are no coin-operated washers and driers in this hotel, a curious omission.
Wireless internet is available throughout the facility. Our room also had a jack for an ethernet cable. The wireless signal was robust, i.e., four bars on my Macbook's airport icon everywhere I went. Although prior reviewers reported extremely poky internet speeds, throughput was a consistent 3.75 - 3.80 mbps down and about 1.00 - 1.10 mbps up throughout our stay. The wired and wireless speeds were identical.
The breakfast dining room is open as a comfortable sitting area 24/7. The included continental breakfast was ample with some slight variation day-to-day. Lowfat/no fat choices were available. Nice touches include the 24-hour fruit bowl and cookie jar, free coffee into the evening, free copies of USA Today, and a very reasonably-priced assortment of candies, snacks and sodas at the front desk. The business center had two publicly-available PCs and working printers. The pool was attractive. All the hallways and public areas were fresh, new and clean. Front desk staff was courteous, friendly and professional. Checkout was automatic (good if you're in a rush). There was plenty of clean, well-lit parking for our rental car. The posted price for a hotel shuttle to Austin-Bergstrom Airport was $17, which struck me as kind of high.
Other than breakfast service, there is no restaurant in the hotel. This is true, I believe, of HIE&S generally and is an observation, not a criticism. An Indian restaurant was renovating a satellite building on the hotel grounds, but it opened the day we left so we didn't get to try it. There is plenty of dining nearby, but the convenience of a full-service restaurant next door will be welcome.
The one bugaboo - the "major reservation" noted at the beginning of this review - is the fitness room. It's small and pretty minimal, containing only three major pieces of equipment: a home-quality Proform treadmill, an institutional quality Schwinn recumbent bike, and an institutional-quality Precor elliptical trainer. The problem is, only the treadmill was fully operational. The bike's display and electronics were totally nonfunctional, and the incline function of the elliptical was unavailable due to a low battery level. I reported the situation to front desk staff twice early on during our stay, but nothing got fixed. Luckily for me, very few other guests seemed to use the fitness room, so I had the treadmill (or elliptical) whenever I wanted it. This was the only glaring deficiency in an otherwise fine facility.