This was our first stay at this property, though we were expecting to stay more often as our daughter started college nearby. We stay in IHG properties all the time. This was a bad experience and it goes deeper than just the specifics...
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This was our first stay at this property, though we were expecting to stay more often as our daughter started college nearby. We stay in IHG properties all the time. This was a bad experience and it goes deeper than just the specifics mentioned below. It’s a terrible culture (presumably flowing down from mgt) at this hotel where nobody takes responsibility for anything and everyone blames everyone else for the problems. When we arrived to our room, the air in the room was blowing, but not cooling. I don’t like a freezing room, but not having air on at all wasn’t a good way to arrive on a warm day. The safe in the room was already locked and the keypad didn’t work, probably because the batteries were dead. Since the safe wasn’t bolted down, I asked at the front desk if we could get another one. The front desk staff person said we can send maintenance tomorrow. I asked if we could swap a safe with another room since there were lots of other open rooms and we had to go out. The response was “ Oh no, we can’t move a safe”. I reminded them it wasn’t bolted down asked again if they could just help solve the problem. They said “we can’t, we’d get in trouble.” Apparently maintenance came the next day and opened the safe, except the safe still didn’t work. The keypad was dead. When I mention this to the front desk, the same person said, “but it worked for the maintenance guy”. Ugh. For breakfast, I came down about 10 minutes before breakfast ended. A good bit of the food was empty already. I asked if they had any biscuits, which my wife wanted. And the attendant said “No, I can’t make any more biscuits”. I said please, breakfast isn’t over. With attitude she said “If I did, ‘they’d’ have my head.” The breakfasts at Holiday Inn expresses have become poor enough. Being so cheap to cut off food early is an insult. Right after that, I saw a dad ask for some food (eggs) for his young son who was with him. She gave him a similar answer. He skulked away. The next day on Sunday at 9:35 AM one of the staff was vacuuming outside our door as I went down for breakfast. After I ate, she was downstairs vacuuming the hallway outside other rooms. I asked do you always vacuum Sunday morning in front of doors with the do not disturb tags on them. She said, “Yes, I only work from 9 am -1 pm, as if that was the appropriate answer. I said people may be sleeping, as my wife was. She scoffed at me, while she was also holding her phone blaring in the air with music blaring through the speaker really loud so she could hear it over the vacuum. (I’m not making this up) And then she said, “ if you think this is a problem, from what I heard was going on here last night there were people running around and making a lot of noise.” Really good answer. Clearly, this is a property where the customers don’t matter much. The staff are not empowered to solve problems, shift, responsibility to others whenever they can and live in fear that they might violate management’s picayune rules. That’s a pretty unhealthy culture. IHG, Sap hotels and property manager Mayra Silva have some corrective work to do.