This hotel is new...that's the best feature, it's clean and fresh.
We booked this hotel for Memorial Day weekend because we are choicehotel members and found it on their website. We also booked it because we are a family of 5 and everything on the beach that would fit us was $180-$200 per night at least. The location was good (although it's right on Hwy 98 and you could hear the traffic very well), about a mile and a half from the beach. However, Panama City really needs to invest some serious money into the roads...since they've allowed so much growth the traffic is crazy and with just 2 lane highways along the beach the pace was a crawl. Although I guess if I didn't have 3 kids in the car I would have considered myself cruising the strip instead of being in ridiculous traffic. :-) Problem is that with all the growth it's impoosible to see the beach from the road anymore unless you're staying at one of the MANY high-rises that line the shore.
As far as the hotel is concerned I would highly recommend it for business travelers who aren't there really for leisure. One thing that was not stated on the website nor when we checked in is that this is an extended stay hotel. This was our first stay at a MainStay so I don't have experience and to me the name alone was not clear on that I guess. This means no housekeeping until the 3rd night. A single traveler (or even a couple) wouldn't use up the towels as fast and keep the room a bit cleaner I would imagine. We stayed 2 nights and with three kids we ran out of towels the first day and had to clean everything ourselves. The room had a mini kitchen which was very nice - full refrigerator, two burner stovetop, sink with mini dishwasher and a microwave. The beds were extremely comfortable and the bathroom was roomy. The rooms did not have any dressers so with the 5 of us we had to pretty much live out of the suitcases...and extended stay would have been a pain. Oh yeah, another thing is to make sure you stay no higher than the second floor - only one elevator and it's very slow.
The amentiies were decent mainly again because their new...the pool was small but clean and with no jacuzzi. The "business center" was a small desk with a computer and printer near the front desk...it looked like they placed it there as an after thought. The breakfast area was small and the breakfast included the basics - packaged pastries, cereal, juice, milk and coffee. With the full mini kitchen this did not bother us since we brought groceries to prepare breakfast ourselves.
The staff was friendly but it didn't seem genuine...at times I felt that we were kind of a nuisance keeping them from their work. I didn't have any specifics to that, it's just the way I felt - my wife felt that they were nice enough.
Anyway, overall we probably won't stay here again only because it really doesn't offer the things that we want when we travel. But this doesn't mean that it's a bad hotel...again, it's clean, the rooms are comfortable and roomy with very good amentiies and the staff is decent. I would definitely recommend it for business single or couple travelers, not families.
