Hampton Inn Columbus West
Hampton Inn Columbus West is an economical option in Downtown Columbus, Upper Arlington, handy for travellers focused on central Downtown Columbus and the main sights.
Guests typically choose Downtown Columbus for its balance of location and price; Hampton Inn Columbus West is a good fit if you want to be near the action in Upper Arlington.
Key facts
Around Downtown Columbus
What hotels actually cost in and around Upper Arlington
Budget in this market means $85-125 a night, and it buys a chain room on the I-270 ring in Hilliard, Worthington or off Henderson Road — clean, free parking, breakfast, and a 10-20 minute drive to Tremont Road. Mid-range is $130-200 and covers most of what people book: the OSU District along Olentangy River Road, Grandview Heights near Grandview Avenue, and Dublin's newer stock near Bridge Park. The top end here is $210-330, concentrated in the Short North, Victorian Village and Downtown Columbus, where you also start paying $15-30 a night for parking that costs nothing in Upper Arlington. Franklin County lodging taxes add roughly 15-17% on top of the quoted rate, which is worth doing the maths on before comparing two options across the county line.
Rates spike on a predictable calendar rather than a general "high season". Ohio State home Saturdays from September to late November take mid-range rooms to $300-500 with two-night minimums, and the Michigan weekend in even-numbered years goes higher still. Memorial Tournament week at Muirfield Village in late May or early June does the same thing to Dublin and the western side of Upper Arlington, typically $250-400. The Arnold Sports Festival in early March hits downtown hardest, and Ohio State move-in in the third week of August clears out the campus-adjacent cheap rooms for several days. Outside those dates, January, February and early December are the genuinely soft weeks, and booking three to four weeks ahead is plenty.
The Upper Arlington booking trap nobody warns you about
The trap is the address. Because Upper Arlington has very little hotel stock inside its own borders, a lot of listings marketed as Upper Arlington are in Columbus — on Olentangy River Road, near Bethel Road, or off Henderson — and the difference between "5 minutes from Tremont Center" and "across SR-315 in the Bethel Road corridor" is a 15-minute drive at rush hour. Check the street name against the city line before you book: Tremont Road, Northwest Boulevard, Fishinger Road, Reed Road, Riverside Drive and Arlington Avenue are inside; Olentangy River Road and Lane Avenue east of Kenny are not. The second half of the trap is the Ohio State football schedule, which is published months ahead and which controls prices for a suburb sitting 2.5 miles from a 100,000-seat stadium. Look at the seven home dates first, then pick your weekend.
The golf pilgrimage needs the same reality check. Scioto Country Club at 2196 Riverside Drive — Donald Ross design, 1926 US Open, 1931 Ryder Cup, 1968 PGA Championship, and where Jack Nicklaus learned the game before playing for the Upper Arlington High School Golden Bears — is private, as is Muirfield Village in Dublin. What you can do is the Jack Nicklaus Museum on Olentangy River Road, the Scarlet and Gray courses of the Ohio State University Golf Club on Tremont Road just north of the city, and Memorial Tournament tickets in late May. And the area people wrongly skip is Grandview Heights with Marble Cliff: 3 miles from Tremont Center, the best concentration of restaurants within reach of Upper Arlington, and usually $30-60 a night cheaper than the equivalent room in the Short North.
Where to stay in Upper Arlington: the areas compared
Start with an honest fact: Upper Arlington is almost entirely residential, so most rooms sold as "Upper Arlington" sit a mile or two over the city line in Columbus — along Olentangy River Road, Lane Avenue, or off Henderson Road near SR-315. Inside the city, the useful anchors are Tremont, Kingsdale, Northam and the Mallway District. Tremont puts you at Tremont Center and the main library at 2800 Tremont Road, with Northam Park's tennis courts and pool a short walk north; the Mallway District, the 1920s shopfront row on Arlington Avenue, is the one genuinely strollable block in the city. Kingsdale, at Tremont Road and Northwest Boulevard, is the closest node to SR-315 and the Ohio State campus and the easiest base if you are driving in and out daily. Old Arlington, the National Register historic district of 1913-1930s houses on curving streets like Cambridge Boulevard, is where you walk rather than sleep — expect short-term rentals, not hotel desks.
Everything else is a trade between price and distance. Barrington, Canterbury and Ridgeview are quiet mid-city and north-city residential pockets around Fishinger and Reed Roads where a car is non-negotiable; Golf View Heights, Arlington Ridge and Riverside Bend sit out west near Riverside Drive, Griggs Reservoir Park and Scioto Country Club, which is the pick if parks and water are the point of the trip. For actual hotel choice, the Ohio State University District and Grandview Heights (with tiny Marble Cliff, population under 700, wedged between them) are 3 miles from Tremont Center and usually run $130-200; Dublin, Worthington and Hilliard sit on the I-270 ring at $95-160; Short North, Victorian Village, Downtown Columbus and German Village are the top of the ladder at $190-330 and the furthest from Upper Arlington's parks, about 6 miles. Clintonville, Bexley, Powell and Delaware are worth it only if a specific thing draws you — Whetstone Park of Roses, Capital University, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, or Alum Creek State Park.
