Booking your hotel is a priority! You don’t want to delay this, as hotels get sold out during BGRi/BGR time. Every year, 10,000 freshmen students and their families descend around the same time in West Lafayette. Of these, half will be out of state and the family will stay in town for at least a day or two. So, as soon as you have finalised your itinerary (see my previous post), you should book your hotels immediately.
The University itself has a on-site hotel (The Union Club Hotel at the PMU) but unless you have an unlimited budget, you would probably want to avoid it. The city of West Lafayette itself has a limited number of hotels (just 6!); so you may end up booking across the river in Lafayette town, where there are plenty more.
An easily-made error when searching for a hotel, especially for first-time visitors to the US who are not familiar with the geography of the country, is to enter just “Lafayette” for their hotel search. This will generally default to the larger Lafayette in LA. This is the wrong Lafayette and almost a 1000 miles away from Purdue. Ensure you are searching for accommodation in Indiana i.e. “West Lafayette (IN)” or “Lafayette (IN)”
Lafayette is home to over 24 hotels. Most of the hotel options in Lafayette are all all within a mile of each other- between Walmart and the Meijer stores. Whether you stay in Lafayette or West Lafayette, you would still need to Uber to campus. The nearest hotel in W. Lafayette, Campus Inn, is still a mile from the western side of the campus and the walk to the campus is uphill. I stayed there for a couple of days, but the hotel is terribly dated and the management quite rude. They also do not provide breakfast, daily room service or change of towels- so I would avoid them unless you have no other option.
I also stayed at the Premier Inn, which is also in West Lafayette, and a fairly short ride away. This is a better maintained hotel and you can book this if you want to be as near to campus as you can at a reasonable cost. The third hotel I stayed in was in Lafayette, the Quality Inn & Suites Lafayette I-65, and that was a modern and well-furnished hotel with a great filling breakfast. This was the best hotel of the three. Since I had a rental car, distance was not an issue for me but an Uber ride to Purdue would be no more than 10-15 minutes. It also has the advantage of being right next to a Walmart and just a mile away from the large Target, and we did most of our dorm shopping from these two places. The Red Roof Inn is bang opposite the Quality Inn I stayed at, and is as convenient- but looks more dated.
I stayed at the Quality Inn before BGRi started (as I figured I didn’t have to be near campus), and then moved to Campus Inn on the days of BGRi/ Intl Parents Welcome days (so I could meet up with my son in between his breaks from his activities). After the program, I shifted to Premier Inn (just so I could experience and review a third hotel).
There are plenty of options across the spectrum. Many of the other parents I met were at the Holiday Inn, Hilton Garden Inn, Best Western Plus and Drury Inn- all of these also had great feedback.
Also, you will be likely to bump into parents and families over breakfast when you stay at these hotels. Make sure you mingle and chat. You will be able to share great tips, form lasting friendships and the kids will have the chance to bond and make friends before they have even started their BGRi program. If you don’t have your own vehicle, you may meet parents who do and may be more than willing to give you a ride where they are going. (I know this because I did give several rides to other families!)
In case you have requested an earlier move-in date (than the BGRi one) and if you haven’t heard back from the Housing Office/ Residence Hall Front Desk, I recommend you make three separate hotel bookings at the same hotel you are staying in. The first booking should be for both you and your child’s room before your early move in date (which you know you will definitely need). And two other bookings from the date of request for early check in- one for you and another a cancellable booking for your child’s room. This ensures that in case they can’t allocate the room earlier, then your child is not left without a room if the hotel you are staying gets sold out. If you do get allocated the early move-in, then you can always cancel this third booking for your child without cancelling your own room! This is a wiser move than waiting to hear back from Housing as hotels bookings become scarcer over time.
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