If you're looking for a full-service hotel that has many big-hotel amenities, but you like staying in locally owned and operated places, it's definitely worth staying at Don Hall's Guesthouse in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Better yet, Don Hall's offers a number of affordable packages that include full breakfasts, dinner entrees and event tickets or extras to help you celebrate special occasions during your stay.
We stayed at this hotel near downtown Fort Wayne earlier this summer as guests of Visit Fort Wayne and found it the perfect place to stay as we explored this city in northeast Indiana.
The hotel's location just off of I-69 at exit 311B made it easily accessible from the expressway, and it proved to be a fairly quick trip into downtown Fort Wayne to see many of the town's attractions like its botanical garden and Parkview Field, where we saw the Tin Caps (Fort Wayne's Minor League baseball team) play.
The hotel and its 120 rooms have a somewhat retro feel and the hotel's design of a ring of rooms surrounding a large courtyard with an outdoor pool reminded me a bit of hotels I remember staying with my parents as a kid, but the friendliness of the staff in the hotel and its attached restaurant and solid amenities like decent Wi-Fi and mattresses, recliners in the rooms, a fitness center, airport shuttle, availability of coin-operated washers and dryers (plus full-service laundry), an indoor pool and a truly beautiful outdoor pool, which I really enjoyed using after a long hot and humid day, meant the place had everything we really required for a comfortable stay.
Don Hall opened a drive-in restaurant on 40 acres of swampy land near Fort Wayne in 1946. Hall's humble drive-in eatery evolved over the years into a group of restaurants and related businesses that includes the Guesthouse Hotel and Convention Center, a catering company and a cake company.
The Guesthouse's banquet facilities can accommodate special events for up to 500 people, so it's no surprise to see that they host a lot of weddings at the place.
We ate at the hotel's Guesthouse Grill, but other restaurants in the local group include Takaoka of Japan (a Japanese steakhouse restaurant honoring Fort Wayne's sister city of Takaoka, Japan with a menu of hibachi grill specialties prepared tableside), several pubs and steakhouse-style restaurants, plus a couple of fast-food eateries that see Hall going back to his roots as a drive-through restaurant owner.
Prime rib has been a house specialty at Hall's restaurants for more than 65 years, so we both tried it on at least one of the nights we dined at the Guesthouse Grill. Our prime ribs were nicely cooked and came in a choice of 8 oz, 12 oz. and 14 oz sizes. The rest of the menu consisted of other classic steakhouse-style cuisine like steaks, grilled fish, and chicken and pasta dishes.
Better yet, our dinner entrees at the Guesthouse Grill were included in the price of the room. Most of the grill's dinner entrees came with the room package with a small surcharge for things like larger cuts of meat or premium meals like lobster. Appetizers, premium drinks and desserts cost a little extra, which meant we were basically looking at dinner bills of $5 to $10, plus a tip, if I decided to have a beer with my meal or we opted for an appetizer.
Hall's system for breakfast at the Guesthouse Grill works the same way for hotel guests, with the main breakfast entree included with your room price, so our bills for breakfast were about $3 to $4 with a tip, depending on if one of us wanted to order something like an extra side of sausage.
Don Hall's Guesthouse bills itself as one of the most affordable hotels in Fort Wayne, and this meal-with-your-room system is part of the reason why. Given our experience, I'd find it difficult to argue with that claim.
Hotel packages start at $89 for a one-night single stay with breakfast and dinner. Other packages include a $129 Romantic Getaway with a room for two, a bottle of champagne and local chocolates along with dinner and breakfast for two or the $149 Adventure Package, which we had for one of the nights we stayed that included our room, breakfast, dinner and a canoe rental or bike ride along the Rivergreenway trail system through downtown Fort Wayne.
The $129 Komets hockey package that includes a night's stay, meals and two tickets to see Fort Wayne's ECHL Komets sounds tempting to me!
Thanks to Visit Fort Wayne for sponsoring my recent visit to Fort Wayne, Indiana, providing lodging, meals and help arranging interviews and tours of area attractions for my review, with no further compensation. I was free to express my own opinions about this stay and experiences, and the opinions expressed here are mine.
© Dominique King 2014 All rights reserved
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