For a recent work conference trip, I had an overnight stay in Columbus. And while I would have preferred to stay in a different hotel, work travel policy dictated that I stay at the Drury Inn And Suites Columbus Convention Center in downtown Columbus. On previous years’ trips to Columbus for this conference, the conference had been located on the northern edge of the city so I had stayed at the Cambria Suites and the Sheraton Suites. This year the conference moved downtown so the Drury Inn And Suites Columbus Convention Center was the only reasonable location that I could book. Any other hotels that were allowed per work policy were very far away.
You can check prices for the Drury Inn and Suites Columbus Convention Center at hotels.com or read other reviews at TripAdvisor
Drury Inn and Suites Columbus Convention Center location
The Drury Inn and Suites Columbus Convention Center is located (wait for it….) next to the Convention Center in Downtown Columbus Ohio 🙂
Coming from I-71, you’ll take OH-315 to I-670, get off at 3rd Street and then you’ll need to loop around underneath the bridge back to Nationwide Avenue. There is parking at the hotel which is $12 / night, though many rates have it included as part of the rate.
Drury Inn and Suites Columbus Convention Center rooms
I had a 1 King room, and I have no status or anything with Drury Inn, but I got a suite room. I don’t know if that was an upgrade, or if it was just a matter of signing up for their loyalty program? When you walked into my room, immediately ahead of you there was a desk and then 2 chairs facing a TV.
Over to the right and around the corner was the bedroom with another TV. The TV to available bed ratio was a little high 🙂
There was not a sofa bed. One interesting thing I noticed was in the shower, instead of having individual soap / shampoo / conditioner, they had liquids in a container underneath the shower head.
Drury Inn and Suites Columbus Convention Center food / breakfast / evening kickback
One nice thing about Drury Hotels is that, in conjunction with their “the extras aren’t extra” tagline, they offer what they call an evening kickback every night. If you’re not sure what a Drury Inn and Suites evening kickback is, it’s code for “dinner” 🙂
[Which hotels offer free dinner?]
The menu rotates, but in our case, there were chicken tenders, pasta, baked potatoes, hot dogs and soup. There is also a pop machine and you get 3 alcoholic drink tickets, if that’s your thing.
Breakfast was also served in the morning which was your standard hot breakfast, with eggs, sausage, breakfast potatoes, biscuits and gravy as well as waffles and bagels / donuts
Drury Inn Gold Key loyalty program
And here’s the problem with Drury Inns. I’ve written about Drury Inns before and everything about them is everything I like in hotels. The problem is that their reward program isn’t that great. There is a credit card but it usually gives 15,000 points as a bonus and you can’t top it off by transferring it from any of the other programs. Free nights are anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 points / night or more (the Drury Inn and Suites Columbus Convention Center where I stayed for example is 17,500 points / night), so you wouldn’t even get 1 free night from the signup bonus. Compare that to Hilton, Hyatt or some of the other hotel brands where the signup bonus could get you multiple free nights. The Drury Inn credit card is offered from Commerce Bank which is not one of the larger banks, so I don’t have any data points on how often you might be able to get the Drury Inn card.
You can check prices for the Drury Inn and Suites Columbus Convention Center at hotels.com or read other reviews at TripAdvisor
Have you stayed at a Drury Inn and Suites before? What has your experience been?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
One thing good about Commerce Bank is that they aren’t part of Chase, Citi, etc. So you should be able to get the card. They are a very old school bank with super good customer service. Drury is a good program with, mostly, good hotels. They have some key properties that are awesome but most are very good.
Nice review btw.
Thanks. I was wondering if you might be able to get the card multiple times a la Alaska