Howard Johnson Hotel Toronto-Markham

Stayed here as an alternative to downtown toronto due to good value (under $ 100) a night, free wifi and free parking. Reserved though
, check in was quick and easy but when we got to the room it was like crazy smoke smell like there were ashtrays hidden in the furniture. Like it was clean, but needs new carpets, new bed, new upholstery and potentially washed walls. Luckily the staff switched us to an identical room with no reek. Wifi was free and easy to log in to but suuuuper slow, like 14kbs or worse. Ok to google places to eat, but not for streaming shows or YouTube. Pool and hot tub were warm, clean, not crowded, and nice except there were no guest towels. Luckily we had brought our own. The hotel is close to a different Toronto Asia– town, somewhere I read Toronto had 5 chinatowns, this was definitely close to it. Good news is there were a ton of awesome Asian food restaurants with amazing food and open very very late at night. Otherwise you can find convenience stores, gas stations and of course Tim hortons nearby. Quick drive from here to airport in the morning, we took the etr in less than 30 minutes. We are obviously not from the area and I am still confused about the ETR being a toll road, no where was there a toll booth, or clear signs, but we were driving a rental car and hopefully no one recognized us and we will not be secretly billed for random unlabeled secret Toronto toll roads linked to our rental car license plate. Back to the hotel– bed was queen, prefer king but sheets were nice and the air conditioning was fabulous as we were in Toronto hoping to escape San Diego heat, right in the middle of the Toronto heat wave. Hotel also has a nice tiny snack bar area where you can get chips, soda, microwave meals, ice cream, gum, popcorn, and small sized toiletries, and I think that was open 24 hrs. You went in, grabbed what you needed, and paid the front desk staff. Oh another reason for not 4 stars was that we put the little «leave us alone» tag on the door and at like 9 am housekeeping tried to break into our room, and we were like «go away!!!» we went out for the day, cam back and our room had been cleaned, to our horror. Our shoes were all arranged in nice organized pairs, clothes had been hung up, trash was picked up, bed was made, and bathroom cleaned, despite us leaving on the do not disturb tag. So if you are looking for a hotel to get privacy, like start a meth lab or commit murder, I would not reccomend this place. Overall it did the job and I liked going swimming.

Ok, I realize that I should probably cut them some slack because they were in the middle of repairs when we arrived. But that doesn’t really change the fact that it wasn’t exactly a good experience.
It pretty much reeked of paint. I am fairly chemical sensitive so the smell made me very light headed, nauseous and uncomfortable. We went out to eat just to escape the smell. I was unable to relax and I did not sleep well at all.
I’m also in an accelerated degree program, which means I have a steady stream of homework that I am working on ²⁴⁄₇. This makes it a little difficult to travel, but I assume that wi-​fi is provided in 90% places and I have a handy dandy laptop, so I don’t stress too much about that.
Weeellll guess what.
No wi-​fi. At all. The computers were not even installed yet. The dude at the front desk helpfully informed me that wi-​fi would be available in about 3 months.
Which is awesome for the people who will be staying here in 3 months. It’s not gonna help me get my paper done that is due in 2 days.
My bf and I laughed about that later… he thought it was almost like a big F U to even throw that out there. Unless of course he thought I would be staying there for three months, in which case I suppose it wouldn’t have been a useless bit of information.
The room was cold and heater didn’t work very well. We turned it on and patiently waited. It was just pushing out room temperature air. We decided to go to the bar in the hopes that the room would be warmer when we got back. The bar was nice but the room temp hadn’t really improved too much.
There was a random heater in the middle of the lobby and we joked about just stealing that one and putting it in our room.
Overall, it was a fairly uncomfortable, annoying experience.
I am sure it will be nice… once their repairs are done.
But why wouldn’t a hotel just temorarily close it’s doors when it is undergoing repairs? Are they that desperate for the money?
And more importantly, why don’t they have better heating in there? It’s Canada for Christ sakes! It’s cold! Fix the heaters!