My husband & I used to live in Urbana and were in town visiting friends for a night The hotel's website says the hotel is "Downtown/City Center.” There aren't really any hotels that are downtown or in the city center, but the HIE is a bit further from things. The areas between the hotel and the U of I, downtown Champaign, downtown Urbana, or the mall aren't the greatest. Close drive, not really walkable or anything. The only nearby restaurant is a truck stop/road side diner type place called Urbana Gardens. There are much more convenient areas to stay in Champaign. If you really want to stay in Urbana this place isn't awful.

Check-in was a bit slow but fine. I was really surprised that this hotel has one smallish loud elevator, which probably leads to frustration on busy weekends. Our room had two queen-sized beds. The bathroom was pretty basic with a pretty granite counter top. I was surprised the room had a small non-LCD TV. The room was large, other than two queen beds, there was also a chair, dresser w/ the TV, and a desk.

My first issue was with the cleanliness. The bedding seemed clean, as did the towels, but the room could use some real deep cleaning. The carpet was very stained. I don't know if anyone has tried to clean it, but it either needs to be cleaned or replaced. I refused to not have my shoes on the whole time. The bathroom was also not in great shape. The tub had a few hairs in it. My big issue was that all of the corners of the room had a collection of dust & hair stuck in them. Not huge dust bunnies, but enough that wiping it with a Clorox wiped cleaned it up easily enough (housekeeping might try this). I'd say what a broom, mop, or vacuum can't do housekeeping leaves on the floor.

While the beds were comfy and had the usual Holiday Inn pillow assortment, I did not sleep well. Our room was on the second floor on the back side of the hotel. Unfortunately, the back of the hotel is too close to I-74. All night I heard road noise. Lucky the highway isn't too busy I guess. In addition, the heat/ac unit was kind of loud and ran too much. We didn't have any issues hearing other guests but the hotel also didn't seem too full. We also didn't have any issues with water pressure in the bathroom, just a problem that our showerhead leaked where it connected to the pipe, which caused water to hit the faucet and splash out of the tub (yes solvable with an extra hand towel on the edge of the tub, but another long-term care issue).

Breakfast was fine. Scrambled eggs (not the preformed kind, but probably from a carton), very overdone super thin buffet style bacon, yogurt, cereal, toast, juice, oatmeal, coffee, biscuits & gravy, etc. Of course the normal HIE cinnamon rolls, yum. There was the pancake machine thing also. The machine at this HIE made rather pale, non-fluffy, rubber-like discs. YouTube leads me to believe that other machines make the pancakes a bit darker/more cooked looking, but the machine at this location makes me wish that I had a camera at breakfast. The outside was pale and barely browned; the inside was just as flat and smooth as the outside and resulted in something that neither my husband nor I wanted to eat.

I don’t know that I’d stay at this hotel again. I just think there are probably more convenient locations that are a bit cleaner. Furthermore, the price isn’t great. Maybe if you stay only at HIEs this is the place for you. If you need to be on the north side of Urbana right off the Lincoln Ave exit, I guess this might be the best option. Otherwise, they’d have to clean it up a bit for me to want to stay again. I just really don’t find redeeming qualities. In the future I'd probably stay in Champaign.