As a businessman I have stayed at a lot of hotels over the years. One of my favorite hotels for business days used to be the Hampton Inn. It was a great quality hotel at a great price. You had a nice continental breakfast in the morning, cozy beds and nice locations. Many of these Hampton inns you had nice work areas and pools for relaxing in.  Then I decided to take a small vacation trip to Myrtle Beach with the family. That trip completely changed my outlook and more how I saw or envisioned the Hampton Inn.
There are two Hamptons basically on the main drag area of Myrtle Beach. The one I stayed at was about three streets back from the beach. Anyway, so we arrived and unpacked our bags in the hotel room. The hotel looked reasonably clean and nice. But there was this smell emanating from the floors and walls that just kept getting worse and worse it was like rancid yuck, I mean I don’t know how else to describe it was just disgusting.  We decided to go to the beach and on the way down the elevator we noticed they were removing carpets from several of the rooms.
I was going to tell the lady at the desk that the rooms we had smelled awful like mildew or something horrible. Well, apparently there was no one at the desk, and we waited for a while. So we just decided to take the kids and go to the beach and enjoy the day. We did have a great day at the beach played in the surf and had fun with the kids there. All the while we completely forgot about the smell in the room.
We were exhausted. And went right to bed.  We all woke up with headaches probably from the fact that the smell in the room was of severe mildew and possibly mold. It was horrible.  So I went down to tell the desk clerk about the smell in he room and once again they weren’t there. So we left the hotel and spent another day at the beach. Once again we came back exhausted and went to sleep. Once again we also woke up with major headaches from the mold or mildew that was in the room.
We decided this was enough and so we checked out and that was our last night in that hotel. That was not only the worst experience of our had in a Hampton Inn, that was the worst experience I’ve ever had at a hotel. I will definitely think twice before I ever stay at a Hampton Inn hotel again and I will never, ever, stay at that Hamptin Inn in Myrtle Beach. That was just outright disgusting. The customer service or desk personnel were basically nonexistent and that was just a bad experience that I will never forget. I cannot recommend the Hampton hotels or inns ever again.
I think I stayed at that same hotel and you are right. It has this distinctive odor of mildew throughout. My room may not have been as bad as yours was, but it still was not a pleasant stay.