Clean and nice hotel located near the University of Cincinnati and Hospital. Staff was professional and efficient. Food and beverage was also great. On-site parking was also extremely convenient. We have stayed at Graduate before and will do so again.

I had seen everyone in the Fiona FB group recommending The Graduate as the place to stay as it was an excellent hotel and very close to the Zoo. It is within walking distance if you are younger than we are (70 plus) but it was a short drive and we had no issues parking at the Zoo. The parking at the Graduate is also excellent and the staff were pleasant, professional and very helpful making recommendations for place to visit and east. We are from Canada so we were not familiar with the area at all but had no problems finding anything.

The Graduate Cincinnati hotel is packed with colors and unique decor. Aesthetically, we loved this hotel. The rooms are decorated very nicely and the lobby and lower level common areas are tastefully decorated with several opportunities for a photo-op. There is plenty of seating in the common areas, plus a small cafe with coffee and "Fiona's" restaurant. We loved the homages to Fiona the hippo throughout the hotel. We stayed for one night and had a pleasant experience with the employees working at the hotel. The parking situation was also easy; they offer parking for an additional $10 per night in the parking garage attached to the hotel. The hotel is also located in the University of Cincinnati campus, allowing a safe atmosphere with an interesting drive through campus. The Cincinnati Zoo is also only .5 miles away, and you can easily walk there in 10 minutes or less.

Unfortunately, our night of sleep was not as great as we would have liked it to be. Although the room temperature was comfortable, the mattress was very, very hard and we both had difficulty getting comfortable. The bed itself was just not as high of a standard as we would have expected for the quality and price of this hotel. The ceiling and walls were also very thin: we could hear every single noise outside of the room in the hallway, and we could also hear our upstairs neighbor very clearly all throughout the night. Unfortunately even at 1AM on a Saturday evening, we had hallway neighbors making noise and preventing us from falling asleep. Another "iffy" moment was the unnecessarily large "authorization charge" placed on my credit card. We stayed for one night and paid approximately $240 including taxes. However, an authorization charge of approximately $540 was placed on my credit card. I am still waiting to receive a refund of from this authorization charge two days later, and am dissatisfied with how large this amount was; I have never seen such a high authorization charge compared to the total charge.

Overall, because we know that we did not like the hard mattresses and had a poor night of sleep, we probably would not return here. However, the hotel is beautiful, unique, and "fun".