For $55 a night over a holiday weekend, this place wasn't bad. The staff is friendly enough and checking in and out was fast. The king-bed room we stayed in was furnished nicely, the bed was comfortable and there was no road noise facing away from the interstate. Traveling around the Bay area is easy as the place is pretty close to everything around town. On the down side, this hotel is in need of some moderate maintenance and renovations. During our 3 night stay one of two elevators was perpetually broken, the fitness room was out of service, and the water pressure for all the plumbing fixtures in our room was rather poor. Breakfast was nothing special, but it was a nice free-be considering the price.

In short, stay here if you want to save some money, desire to be close to both downtown Tampa and downtown St. Pete, and don't plan on spending much time in the hotel.

Our room was comfortable and did not seem to have any of the drawbacks noted by other reviewers. We were on the side away from highway so road noise was not a problem but it would be on the highway side. The breakfast was ok too.
However, the exercise room was closed, the breakfast was as little as they could get away with, and our reservation at Choicehotels.com was for a room witha king bed. We were given 2 doubles and told that there were on kings available. When I asked about this I was told that they were all given away already ( at 5:30 pm ?!) This was not acceptable.

Let's see, what went right here?

The hot breakfast was very good! The front desk responded well.

Now for the rest. I finally figured out after the first night that the AC/heat was really just recirculating the air in the room without changing the temp. The outside temp was pretty much in between the two so that's why it took me that long to figure it out.

During that first night, one of the two elevators broke down leaving only one for the five floors. It's a good thing I brought my ear plugs because noise from people in the hall came right into the room. Fortunately, I had asked for a room facing away from the interstate or even the ear plugs might not have been enough. I reported the A/C or lack thereof to the front desk on my way out that morning and it was actually working properly when I returned that night(Christmas).

This morning after I finished up breakfast, I noticed that the second elevator was no longer running. The desk clerk seemed to be confused about whether it too was broken or had been taken offline so maintenance could work on the other one. There were quite a few others who had been at breakfast who found they would have to take the stairs to get back to their rooms and some mentioned they had disabled friends up in their rooms who would't be able to use the stairs. I hoofed it up the stairs, got my remaining things and checked out.

The reason I chose to stay here was that it was half the price of the Hampton Inn and it seems I got what I paid for. To compare to the Hampton, the Comfort Inn had barely 7' ceilings in the bathroom and entryway, the room is considerably smaller, the wi-fi and water pressure on the 5th floor were both weak, there were only two guest-usable power plugs, the toilet ran constantly albeight quietly, the "comfort" level of the bed and the room in general were inferior, the breakfast wasn't quite as good, and you actually had to check out at the desk to get a receipt. There wasn't one under your door on checkout day.

This was a good value location for a base to use in St Petersburg for a few days. Check-in was efficient. The room was good, and had a window that opened, that was nice for northerners in December. Checkout was friendly, and resolved a minor check out issue very well.