Description: If you’re in town for an event at the Georgia World Congress Center, stay at the Omni if you can – many hotels are within walking distance of the GWCC, but the Omni is the closest by far, and quite a nice place to stay, too. I wouldn’t recommend it for a tourist visit, though. Travelers would be better off staying in more neighborhood-y parts of the city. The only nearby tourist attractions are the (must-see) Georgia Aquarium and the World of Coca-Cola exhibit, as well as Centennial Olympic Park and the CNN Center/Studio Tour, but they’re right on top of each other, and can all be visited in one day.
I spent five nights at the Omni, booked through two separate reservations made on two different credit cards, only one of which I wanted to actually get charged, and I showed up about three hours before check-in time. The Omni staff didn’t even blink, and that level of service turned out to be the standard. Every evening I came back to a small bottle of milk in my ice bucket and a huge chocolate chip cookie next to it, plus turned-down linens and a small card on the nightstand letting me know the next day's weather. The layout of the hotel is a little tricky, with multiple sets of elevators and four floors of lobbies spread across two buildings, so staff members roam around just to point you toward the restaurant or tell you where the fitness center is. My room was spacious, with the requisite mini-amenities you’d expect in a low-end-of-the-high-end hotel: waffle-weave robe, extensive minibar, lots of unnecessary pillows on the (king) bed and some extra toiletry items like mouthwash in the bathroom. Lounge areas were similarly plush, and plentiful. Guests get free wi-fi access throughout the hotel, a big plus when traveling on business.
There
are a couple of cons. The pool is minuscule, and overlooks a whole lot of nothing – train tracks and some criss-crossing highways. The window in my room faced those tracks too, and I was woken up more than once by the noise from passing freight trains, and I sleep like the dead. You can avoid that noise thing by requesting a room in the South Tower, or one that faces Centennial Olympic Park. The Omni does not appear to be with the program as far as opting out of linen refreshes (You’ll get new towels every day and you’ll like them!) which may chafe against your greener impulses. The proximity of the convention center means (duh) lots of business travelers and conference-goers may flood the hotel at any time, and overwhelm the lobby areas with loud shop talk and thousands of matching tote bags.
Check around for rates – I beat the conference rate by almost a hundred bucks for the weekend preceding it started by paying with AmEx and booking through the hotel’s website. Weekend rates are probably better in general, due to all the GWCC business.
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