Howard Johnson Inn Winter Haven

I booked a double bed, but when I checked in the nice lady at the desk asked if I could do with a single King, so I said ok. To my surprise, the room was a double room with one bed removed. The other headboard and lamps are still there, along with the indentations on the carpet. Just very strange. Old style tube TV, a blast from the past, but it works well. Classy white on white used furniture store paint job, but the shower works. Neat how they used a bathroom sink faucet to hold the shower head, never saw that done before. My gigantic cockroach was upside down and dead at the bathroom door. The cleaning staff left the poor guy when they tidied my room, so I guess he belongs there, maybe a pet? I left him be…

My husband and I stayed here in March for 4 nights. The tv in our room had some issues and we called the front desk and within 10 min someone came in and brought us a different tv and it worked great. Everyone was very friendly and we very much enjoyed our stay there. Their pool is very nice and we had no cockroaches in our room as experienced by someone else. Has free wi-​fi also. We will be going back next month to Winter Haven to purchase a home and we will be staying here for 2 weeks. Looking forward to our stay.

They’re certainly trying; the desk staff was efficient and professional and housekeeping did the best with what they had to work with, my bed was comfortable, the sheets were clean and the A/​C was cold. But I’d rather have stayed in a tent.
The place is gross, smell of smoke everywhere, lights flickering in the hallways… it makes you feel like one of the idiots in a movie who can’t hear the scary violins in the soundtrack while the whole audience just knows this might be your last night.
They tried to paint over the years of wear and tear, use broken furniture in new and interesting ways, but this is skid row.

Really Gross & Unprofessional. Woke up to an dying cockroach in the bathroom on the 1^st morning of 6 days /​5 nights. Check my picture. I left the vermin untouched to see what management would do or say. As I left, the cleaner in the hallway just looked at me & said hello. I was never contacted about the half dead cockroach, or being moved to a more hygienic room.
Later that evening, I had to kill another large size cockroach that was on the ceiling with my tennis shoe. Some of the stucco of the ceiling came down on the bed sheets. The next day when I returned, the sheets were cleaned & the cockroach parts had been vacuumed away. On the last day, there was a small cockroach in the bathtub which went down the drain when I turned on the shower.
Checkout is at 11AM and I would leave my room between 9−10am everyday; yet if the cleaners knocked on my door & I was still in there, they would not return. I ended up having my room cleaned only 2 out of the 5 days of my stay.
I don’t want a refund or compensation. I just wanted to share the truth with others because I think that is fair. You will not find peaceful sleep here.

I booked through an agency and told them that I had a pet. They said that was ok and reserved the room for me. I get to the hotel and the front girl says 2 adults kids and pets. I said yeah. We get to the room and they immediately call the room and want us to move our room. Meanwhile I have 2 small kids all ready for bed. It’s 10pm and we had unpacked everything. It was annoying. She then argued with me that she had discussed pets. It wasn’t a big deal that we had to pay an extra 50 dollars. It was the way she handled the situation. We get to the new room and it had ketchup on the chairs. Gross! Probably try another hotel next time! !!!

I travel frequently for business and my manager booked me into the Haines City Howard Johnson. The dirty lobby and the lack of a lighted sign were the first hints that this was not a clean comfortable choice. After getting my key, I discovered the guest accommodations were even worse. Several suspicious men hanging out in the parking lot. Trash everywhere, filthy smelly hallways with dim lighting. The room and hallways smelled so badly, I immediately returned to the desk to return the keys. I requested that they refund my company because I did not feel their establishment was safe or clean. They said pre-​paid rooms do not qualify for refunds! I found a clean comfortable Hampton Inn about a mile away. My safety and health were worth the extra $ 20 in rates difference.

This is an old building. Not that there is anything wrong with old but it hasn’t been ventilated very well so it smells musty. The online registration doesn’t seem to work and the price is higher when you get there than what is advertised online.
The breakfast leaves a lot to be desired. I believe it is supposed to be a continental breakfast but there were not any pastries except small donuts. The fruit consisted of bananas and nothing else. Overall I would say just a little overpriced for what your getting.

We were in town for the Ironman 70.3 and needed a place for one night. We checked out early to head to the race, about 4:20am. A couple of days later a charge shows up on our debit card for $ 189. When we called the hotel, they said that we made three international phone calls. Trying to explain that we didn’t make those calls was fruitless. We requested the receipt of the calls made; never received them. It is currently under investigation with our bank.

Old, way out dated. Room smelled, sliding door to balcony did not close all the way. Our room had an old tube tv that had to be 15 years old. Overall this was a very poor experience, and I would not stay here again let alone recommend to anyone. Even the hotel lobby had a foul smell.

Not a fan. I tried booking online and wasnt sure if it went through or not. I didnt get any sort of confirmation, so I booked somewhere else. (yes i should have called to double check and I’m kicking myself for not). A month later, I get a bill for a no show. I talked to customer service and they said it doesnt matter if I got a confirmation or not, I put my credit card on their website and they couldnt do anything about it. They were professional about it, but I think it was a little unreasonable.

Howard Johnson is a reasonably nice hotel chain. But that’s not what this particular hotel is to the locals. To those that live in the area, it’s host to a small bar, the Rum & Keg Bar and Grill. And a nightclub that has gone through more identity transformations than Prince.
In the 90’s it was Norma Jeans, and the only dance floor in town. Then it closed and reopened as some kind of surf and turf concoction which didn’t last long. Then it went through a major redesign and was reopened as Millenium 2000. It was classier for a while. Until the weekly female dance competition started. Then it all went downhill. Now the entertainment venue (not the hotel) is apparently closed awaiting a new investor to turn it into something else. When the nightclub was closed at any time during my young adult years, there was a palpable sense of desperation among the youth of the city that there was no place to hang out at and have fun.
Now that downtown Winter Haven is witnessing a renaissance of restaurant and nightlife business openings, hopefully there is a less desperate feeling among 20-​somethings looking for fun on Friday and Saturday nights.