Hotel Breakfast Roundup: free hot breakfast wars!
I used to not really care about what hotel brand I stayed in, but this road trip afforded me the opportunity to try out quite a few different chains. I've become a big fan of the (JD Power-defined) "Mid Scale Limited Service" hotels like Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn Express, and Fairfield Inn: they don't nickle-and-dime you since they include hot breakfast and internet in the room rate. And an important bit for road trippers: they often have self-service coin laundry so you don't need to find a laundromat or use the hotel laundry valet.
In the mid-2000s, these brands started upgrading their breakfasts and I think a hot breakfast war has broken out! Unlike more upscale hotel brands, they've even given their breakfasts their own sub-brands. On this road trip, we stayed in 2 Hamptons, 2 HI Expresses, and 1 Fairfield. In my humble opinion, here is their ranking:
#3 out of 3: Fairfield Inn "Early Eats" breakfast
I was greatly anticipating the heavily promoted Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches that is actually co-branded with Early Eats. But walking to the breakfast bar and seeing the sandwiches in bags inside of the refrigerator, for you to microwave, signalled to me that this breakfast is a cut below the others. And it didn't help that the breakfast room at the Fairfield in Flagstaff was tiny and a complete zoo.
First Runner Up: Hampton Inn "On the House" breakfast
This is a solid breakfast and just lost out by a hair. It has everything you could ask for: a rotating menu of different kinds of eggs, biscuits, and something the other two didn't have: cut fruit.
Plus the best-looking and breakfast rooms were at the Hamptons we stayed at. Here was the one in Savannah:
King of the breakfast wars:
Holiday Inn Express "Express Start" breakfast
I didn't really have much affinity towards this brand since I generally focus my hotel point-collecting elsewhere. But this was the best choice in Carlsbad, NM, and closest to Mesa Verde in Colorado. Boy what a pleasant surprise! Hot eggs, potatoes, biscuit, gravy, cold hard-boiled eggs if you want to be healthier and just eat the whites... But what really put HI Express over the top is the warm cinnamon bun. Not doughy and gummy and bloat-inducing like Cinnabon, these are indulgent but soft with a lot of air pockets leading to great mouthfeel.
And extra credit points for consistent branding across touchpoints: even the toiletries are cinnamon-scented. Polarizing, but memorable!
