Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites Montgomery E - Eastchase by IHG

From check-in at the front desk to the housekeepers, everyone was professional, smiling, and helpful. When we needed extras like dish soap, towels, or toilet paper, they brought them. The laundry room was clean, and the dryers got our clothes really dry. Everything was clean and organized, and I liked that the place welcomed pets. I felt at home and recommend it to anyone traveling out of town.

The staff were friendly and welcoming, and the bedroom floor, sink, commode, and mirror all seemed clean. But there was dirt and hair in every corner of the bathroom floor. I was traveling alone and tolerated it, though my wife would have been grossed out. The room was okay, and breakfast was nothing special. I was glad there was a Waffle House across the street. Most of my travel stays have been at IHG properties, and I know they can do better because I've seen it many times. Maybe this location had a lapse in training.

By 5 a.m., nobody had followed up, and no one came to help. I’m checking out and won’t be back. The hotel itself is nice, but apparently you’re supposed to accept the room as it is and not ask for anything. My husband and I had stayed here several times, and the desk clerks knew us. Caleb, a clerk around 30, and I had gotten along before. This time I told him the TV listed 49 channels, but only five came through clearly: the Weather Channel, ESPN 2 and 3, and Fox. The rest were scrambled or had no signal. I have insomnia and am awake watching TV most nights, so I needed the channels to work. Maintenance told him to ask me to unplug the TV. I said that wasn’t my job, and Caleb said it wasn’t his either and he didn’t know how. I unplugged it three times with no improvement. When I asked him to come check it, he said he was busy and couldn’t do anything until 7 or 8. I wrote down the channels with no signal and took pictures. Later, he came upstairs, heard me discussing the problem on the phone, and seemed unhappy. He refused to change my room and became belligerent, rude, and disrespectful to an adult 40x older than he. I called Holiday Inn Customer Service. They said they’d call back in 30 minutes with a room change and asked if I wanted to move to another hotel. I declined because it had gotten colder outside in “Alabama” and I was already settled in. They said they had documented the conversation and Caleb’s exchange with me, and would file a ticket about him. They still hadn’t called back by 5 a.m.

This just wasn’t the kind of stay we’re used to at a Holiday Inn Express. The room was dirty, with maintenance issues that housekeeping should have reported. The stairwells also need a proper cleaning. There’s no coffee maker in the room, so you have to wait in a long line for the Costa coffee machines by breakfast. Breakfast itself was mediocre compared with other HI Express hotels we’ve stayed at.