DC: Holiday Inn Capitol Smithsonian (January 2020)



My spouse and I stayed at the Holiday Inn Washington Capitol for two nights in early January 2020. We reserved our room online. We are IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) Rewards Group Gold Elite members, but we do not feel that we received any special recognition.

The Holiday Inn Washington Capitol is located south of the Mall just 0.1 mile from the Air and Space Museum. Although the hotel’s name includes “Capitol”, it is about 0.8 mile southwest of that famous building. The hotel is located near the offices for the Smithsonian Museums, as well as near other governmental offices like the Department of Education and the Office of Special Education. This means that the area is busy during the workweek/workday but is a bit desolate in the evenings and on weekends. It also means that the few meager restaurants within a block of two walk of the hotel are more geared toward office workers grabbing a quick self-service casual lunch than hotel guests looking for a more relaxing full-service evening meal. There’s a McDonalds, Quiznos, deli, and Starbucks in the same block as the hotel, with varying hours of operation. A CVS pharmacy (which sells other sundry items) has mostly daytime hours. Fortunately, the hotel offers two full-service restaurants called the 21st Amendment (see our separate review) and the Capitol Bistro, as well as a more casual grab-and-go daytime Coffee Kiosk and an adjacent Starbucks. The hotel is located just a block from the L’Enfant Metro station, so it is easy to reach other areas of the city, although taxis and ride services (Uber, Lyft) are also readily available.

Hotel public areas include a large lobby, seasonal rooftop pool (which we imagine is a hit with vacationing families in the summertime), fitness center, business center, and guest laundry. The hotel offers self-parking for a fee of $45 per day. This hotel has conference and event space, which is why we stayed here; my spouse was presenting at a work-related trade show in the hotel. 

The hotel offers 536 rooms spread over eight stories. We booked a one-bedroom suite, but it was not particularly conducive to a relaxing stay. Although our room was technically located on the second floor, due to the elevation of the land, it was actually on the ground floor/street level because our rooms faced an interior outdoor courtyard. Because we visited in the wintertime, that courtyard was relatively unused, but we could see the tables and chairs that office workers and guests must occupy in the warmer months, which would provide no privacy for our suite of rooms if the curtains were open. Upon entering our room, we immediately encountered the bathroom, which was long and narrow, with an expansive vanity (but only a single sink), shower/bathtub combination, and toilet. A long hallway led to the cozy living room, with a small loveseat, TV, mini-refrigerator, and counter with a wet bar and coffee maker (our room had no microwave). The bedroom was spacious, with a king-size bed and nightstand on each side, a desk and rolling chair, a second TV, and a padded bench suitable for holding a suitcase. We were assigned a handicap-accessible room (even though we try not to occupy such rooms because we have a mobility-challenged relative who truly needs one), so the closet in the bedroom had a low hang bar, which was too low for some of our clothes. The bathroom area near the toilet and the bathtub contained the required grab bars, as well as a shower chair that could be attached as necessary. The other accommodation were long plastic handle pulls on the draperies so that someone in a wheelchair could open and close them more easily. Our room had lots of windows, but we were not totally comfortable having the curtains open, nor did we have any sense of security that someone from the outdoors could not access our room. However, our main issue with the suite was the heating system; it was very difficult to maintain adequate temperatures on the very cold week (probably the only one this winter) that we visited. It seemed that the unit in the large bedroom was always blowing cold air, whereas the one in the small living room was overly hot. 

Unfortunately, we really did not enjoy our stay at this hotel; we did not like the location, and we did not find our room comfortable.








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