We have stayed at this Holiday Inn in the past and we were glad we returned this year. The hotel lobby, restaurant and room were all well maintained. The staff was friendly and helpful. One morning we ate breakfast in the restaurant and food was good and the staff friendly. We really enjoyed our suite. It was quite large with a full kitchen, couch in the sitting area and a work desk. This hotel is ideal if you are staying for several nights. It's location is very convenient next to I-59 and on a main drag through town. Overall this was a great experience and I would definitely come back again.

I'm still steaming from this bad experience. First of all, this hotel is on the high side, price wise for this area, so you would expect a little more. Unfortunately that's not the case. I stayed 2 nights. The day after the first night the cleaning staff never serviced our room. We called them around noon to tell them we were going out, could they please clean the room. They said they would but never did come by. I called around 5pm to the front desk. No cleaning staff was at the hotel, so they couldn't clean it. The General Manager gave me a voucher for 2 free breakfasts (even though we were 3 people). Unfortunately the breakfast experience was also bad. It's a small restaurant. They had a buffett style breakfast, but they coudn't handle it when the place was full. There was no coffee, no juice and a grouchy waitress to top it off. I had to come back up to my room to make my own coffee. On top of that, someone called me on the hotel phone and woke me up early in the morning. When I answered, no one spoke.

BTW - there is no free continental breakfast at this hotel.

I'll stay away from this place. You should too.

This place has had a complete turn around since the previous reviews were made. It is very nice and is now well maintained!! The beds were comforatble and we also booked our companies meeting there and the staff and accomodations were outstanding!! I would defintely stay there again and highly reccommend this hotel to travelers of all ages! Wonderful!!

I stayed at the Hattiesburg Holiday Inn, which is at the intersection of US49 and I-59 on Gateway Drive, on Monday night, June 19, 2006.

I have never stayed at a more disgusting place in my life, and in my occupation, I travel a lot. I've stayed in everthing from the Hilton to Days Inn to mom-n-pop roadway inns. Let me tell you, this was my worst experience ever. If you are considering staying at this place, please read my review thoroughly...I'll walk you through a stay at this deplorable hotel.

I had to lecture at USM on the evening of June 19, so I decided to take my son with me and stay over, since my lecture wouldn't end until well after 10PM, and my son wanted to do a little shopping the next morning. I reserved a suite, which cost me $130 (including tax), for one night.

I checked into the Hattiesburg Holiday Inn at approximately 4PM. Only AFTER I checked in and paid for the room did the desk clerk tell me that the key-card system was down, so my son and I would have to have our door unlocked by maintenance every single time we needed to enter our room. I had to be at lecture at 6PM, so finding another hotel, showering, ironing clothes, dressing, and being at the university within two hours was not an option. I asked the desk clerk exactly how long they anticipated the system being down. In a very snotty way, she said, "I don't know--it could come back up today or it could be a week from now." Grrrrrrrr.

So, she radioed someone else on staff to meet us at our suite door.

We unloaded all of our luggage, laptop computer, and other stuff with which I have to travel when I am working. We rode the elevator up to the fifth floor. When we stepped off of the elevator into the hot interior hallway, there was an odor that was suffocating.

It smelled like a mountain lion had run up and down the hall, urinating all the way. It took our breath away. It was stiffling.

We walked into the suite, which was room 514. Now, I've had suites before, but this was no suite. It was a room with two double beds, a couch, a tv, a small kitchenette and a bathroom in which you could hardly turn around. I knew then that I had been overcharged for what I got, and that I should have stayed at the Inn on the Hill or the Fairfield Inn, both of which are much nicer and MUCH less expensive.

The A/C unit in the room was not working properly. It didn't cool, but worse, it sounded as if it housed an ogre from Hades. It roared. It burped. It grinded. It squeaked. It begged to be put out of its misery. I took the front panel off of it to see if I could silence the noise, but was disgusted by what I saw. Toenail clippings. A dirty drink straw with fuzz stuck all over it. Crumbs. Insect droppings. A thick layer of hair and dust. I quickly put the front back on and did my best to forget what I had just seen.

Remember that cat urine odor? It permeated our room, too. Thank god my son has recently discovered that cheap man-cologne Axe. As you mothers know, that Axe stuff ain't the best smelling stuff on the market, but it smells a lot better than cat urine. My son sprayed our room down, so that at least we didn't have to smell the cat pee when we were in our room.

Next--I had a cinnamon bun that I wanted to heat up for a quick snack before I had to go lecture. The microwave didn't work, though. And there were NO utensils in the kitchen, even though the hotel's website claimed that there were. Not even a paper towel or plate.

Also, I needed to iron my clothes before lecture, but the iron was full of old mildewy water and broken in two pieces. I had to lecture in wrinkly clothes.

The bathroom: The tub was filthy. The sink had mildew and black algae looking stuff around the upper edge, hidden under the marble lip of the vanity top. In a room in which the maximum occupancy was listed as five, there were only three towels. The bathroom was so small that one person had a hard time in it. Nothing about this room was a suite.

The beds had bare box-springs--no dust ruffle, no sheet, no nothing. On the top was a comforter that looked like it had seen its better days about five years ago.

The TV had a red glow to it that most cheap TVs develop in their dying days. Although the xeroxed channel list on the nightstand listed sixty channels, we only got twenty. No HBO, no A&E, just very basic channels.

It's a good thing that my son had no intentions of going for a swim. The pool was closed down, and it looked like a slime pit, with yellow caution tape around it. Don't ask me--I have no idea what happened there.

My son and I left to head to the university. We took everything we had back out to the car, for fear that, with the current key-card situation, someone would steal our stuff. I lectured at USM until well after 10PM, and then we drove by Pizza Hut to pick up a pizza before heading back to the sorry excuse for a hotel.

I went inside to get a cart for our luggage. The desk clerk said, "We don't have any. I guess people just take them to their rooms." There were two men with Holiday Inn badges on, standing at the desk, chatting with the woman. No one offered to help us get our stuff to our room.

I told the desk attendant to please have someone meet us at our room to open it for us, that we were going to get our luggage out and would be up in 10 minutes. We unloaded, and carried all of our stuff to the elevator.

***When we got off of the elevator on the fifth floor, we noticed that our room was open. WIDE OPEN. No one standing there at all. Whoever unlocked our room just pushed the door open, flipped the safety latch back, and left it open. It was ten minutes between when I asked to have our room opened and when we arrived at our room. I was furious.

I called back down to the front desk and asked to speak to the manager. The desk clerk said there was no manager on duty. I told her to have the manager call us when she came back on duty. Then I proceeded to tell the desk clerk that this hotel was the most deplorable place in which I had ever stayed. I even considered calling Hattiesburg PD about the room being left open, door ajar. We never received a call from the manager.

I also called Holiday Inn's Priority Club complaint number. The woman I talked to was indeed apologetic, but in reality, there was nothing she could do, because the Hattiesburg Holiday Inn is independently owned and only uses the Holiday Inn franchise name.

We didn't sleep much Monday night. I carry mace, so I slept with it by my bed. If I had not had mace, I would not have stayed at this hotel. Like I said, it looks lovely when you drive up to it, and the lobby area is also nice. But god help you when you get past the lobby and into the elevator. It all goes downhill from there.

When I checked out the next morning, the clerk asked me, "How was your stay?" I said, "Without a doubt, I have never stayed in a worse place than this one. If I would have had more time yesterday afteroon, I would have found another hotel. You people should be ashamed of the way you run this place."

I was given a $40 discount on my room--which brought the price down to $90, which was still 3-times more than what this room was worth.

If you are looking for a hotel because your child is graduating at USM, or your spouse is stationed at Camp Shelby, or you travel on business, do not stay at this place. I have already advised our department administrator to never book rooms at this place for job candidates. I will tell anyone I encounter to stay away from this place, even if all other hotels are booked. Stay in Columbia. Stay in Petal. But do not stay at this place.

The Hattiesburg Holiday Inn is filthy, stinky, in disrepair, and worst of all--UNSAFE for women or children. Stay away.