Don't get me wrong here. There's really nothing WRONG with the Crowne Plaza Brookhollow. It is a perfectly adequate corporate chain hotel (...yawn...'scuse me!) in a perfectly ordinary suburban enclave in Northwest Houston. "Conveniently located" just a totally average distance of 10 miles from anything of any real merit or interest in the Houston area. An average company could hold an acceptably average marketing meeting here, or an average family could have a totally average weekend getaway here for a very average price.
I think you catch my drift...


What the Crowne Plaza Has Going for It....
The hotel is your basic average dark glass hotel of late 80s or early 90s vintage. It's built in 2 parts: a 9-story tower with an adjacent 3-story courtyard motel-style building. The courtyard-style motel building wraps around the central swimming pool area, and the pool is really the only outstanding feature of the property.

I love the swimming pool here! It's a big outdoor pool with tons of play space, wide open decks with tables and lounge chairs, and a nice big jacuzzi tub for soaking in while the little guys do their recreational thing. Too many hotels today have inadequate little swimming pools, and it does my heart glad to see hotels that still have decent swimming pools. This is a pool a family could really ENJOY!

Aside from the pool, there's not a whole lot of "facilities" here. Naturally, being out in the average suburban landscape, there's plenty of free parking ... so that's one benefit of staying outside the downtown area. There is an exercise room too, but it's small, dark and fairly uninviting, in an average corporate hotel amenity checklist sort of way. There's 3 exercise cycles and 2 other devices in the room, but that's it. There's no gift shop or newsstand on site either...just a closet off the reception area with a few candy bars, a dismal selection of sodas, and some packs of stale cookies and crackers. If you get the munchies, you're much better off heading off site to any of the 80 gazillion (I counted) average suburban strip shopping centers that exist within an average of 2 miles of the hotel.
There are a whole slew of meeting rooms on the main level, plus one coffee stand that's only open on weekdays. The hotel claims to offer free newspapers to guests, but it's only that definitely below-average USA Today rag --- and only available on weekdays. Definitely nothing worth getting your hair up in rollers over.


A Somewhat Above Average Room for a Good Night's Sleep....
The best reason to stay at the Crowne Plaza Brookhollow is simply because you want a clean, spacious, comfortable room and you have your own car, so staying out in the sticks isn't too much of a burden if it saves you some money.

The rooms here ARE pretty nice. My king room (814) has quite a lot of space. The furnishings are tastefully conservative, with dark mahogony-finish wood and comfortably neutral earth tone linens. The bed is nicely firm with a warm comforter and no less than 5 pillows on it (I don't know where I'll meet FOUR women to share the bed with me, but I guess I better give it the ole college try!) There's no closet in the room, but an attractive armoire provides some out-of-sight storage space. I love having a big easy chair near the window with a comfy ottoman to pop my feet up onto after a tough day of loafing.

There's an average-sized 25" color TV getting your same unacceptably below average limited range of 20 or so channels, just like every other mediocre corporate hotel chain in America these days. (God, how I detest the mediocrity of ESPN and CNN!) The work desk is quite nice with a large surface area, a bright worklamp and surface-level power outlets and ethernet internet connection. The hotel has Wi-Fi in all guest rooms as well...

The bathroom is just an average bathroom. Plain white fixtures, plain off-white ceramic floor tiles, plain fake marble (but obviously plastic) countertop. The Re-Nu toiletries aren't fancy smelling, but they do the trick just fine for me. Towels were plain white, rather small, thin, and scratchy, but they got me dry enough, I suppose.

Overall, I got a good night sleep here. The room was quiet, everything worked well, and the bed was very comfortable.


The Somewhat Below Average Food and Drinks...
Silly me!! I actually BELIEVED there was a restaurant on site when I flipped open the guest services book in my room and saw the invitation to dine in the hotel dining room. In my constant quest to be as consumerly helpful as possible, I even went downstairs LOOKING for it. Unless the Crowne Plaza guys pulled a joke on me and cleverly disguised the restaurant as a mens room, I pretty much came to the conclusion that the restaurant does not exist. Too bad. The flier thing in the guest services book made it sound pretty darn enticing with the absolutely spoofably average hotel restaurant name of "Remingtons". Ah well, at least I got a little laugh out of the mediocre name...not a big laugh...just an average one.

There is a room service menu in the room too. I didn't try to call and see if that exists or not. The prices were just too darn scary: $12 for a bacon & egg breakfast! Youch! $28 for a rib eye steak! Youch!

No big deal though. There are dozens of ordinary chain restaurants all up and down the Northwest Freeway here. If you can't find an Applebees, Olive Garden, or Hooters, you just don't have your eyes open. Of course there is nothing of any exceptional merit here, but such is life in average suburbia. There's also average and below-average kinds of bars (the only kind you'll ever find in shopping centers). I will also mention that there is a topless strip club just a 100 yards down the freeway access road from the Crowne Plaza --- it's called Gold Cup, and its one of Houston's many average, mainstream adult entertainment venues. Naturally, I don't know much about THOSE kinds of businesses....naturally....but if you go there to investigate, tell Angie that Mark says "Grrrrr!"


About Crowne Plaza's Below Average Location...
Houston is America's most unweildy sprawl. It's a city of 4 million with about 3 or 4 core high-rise clusters spread out around the city. The only ones I consider "good" locations are Downtown and, in a pinch, the Medical Center area or the Galleria area. The other 80% of Houston is just scatter sprawl with haphazard clusters of industry, residence, and commercial overdevelopment. Houston is a good example of why every other city in the country has zoning regulations.

In any case, the Crowne Plaza Brookhollow is close to NOTHING of any real merit. It's at least 10 miles from downtown. It's at least 10+ miles from Bush Intercontinental Airport (and maybe 20+ to Hobby Airport). It's 10 miles to the Galleria if you want shopping in stores that aren't Dollar Tree, Wal-Mart, or pawn shops. The only thing the hotel is close to is the Northwest Freeway (US 290) --- hardly what I call a major tourist attraction.


On Average...
The Crowne Plaza Brookhollow is a perfectly acceptable place to stay if you have a car and know your way around Houston. It's not an ideal tourist hotel because it's close to nothing of real value and the public transportation options in this part of town are not pretty. The hotel is a bit dated, some of the expected perks and amenities are below average or non-existant, but the place makes up for it to some extent with good rooms, attractive prices, and free parking with easy access to one of Houston's busiest major highways. There's another 100 average cookie cutter hotels nearby that can say the same thing though...YAWN!


Some Houston Hotels I Like Better...
* Omni
* Hilton Americas


Recommended: No