Holiday Inn Express & Suites Meriden

Just not a reason to stay at this commodity type hotel unless you’re earning points as New Haven has no other options.
First off after a long trip in Asia, it’s disappointing to use be stuck with a low flow shower head at a coastal hotel. I didn’t care at all about the gray water toilet in Cambodia, as at least lots of hot water.
Some nice workers at HIE, yet… Located so you have to do a U-​turn to either enter or leave. The steakhouse in walking distance often has terrible service.
An associate noticed they did change out the steamy (well when I saw it) box of breakfast omelets for fresh ones, yet looked so unappetizing they had to take away old ones.
Bathroom has loud, automatically on fan, so diminished chance of normal level TV listening during use. And final dumb thing the bathroom products lightly used morning 1 turned out to have been removed for morning 2, and 2 lotions were now on counter, 0 conditioner.

All I need to say is that I typically check reviews prior to my stay at a hotel. In this case my stay was a last minute decision. The overall stay for me was fine simply for one night and I mean one night only! The hotel seemed to have a terrible odor upon entering and the customer service agents are indeed unprofessional and are not trained properly in regards to customer service etiquette. The front desk clerk Vinny charged my credit card twice and my co-​workers and had no way of getting the money credited back to my card. Not only that but construction was occurring at the hotel and it was very disrupting to wake up to loud radio music coming from your window from the construction workers. I had to go downstairs and ask for the workers to turn down or cut the music off. As well, I checked out of the hotel a day early and it took the front desk clerks 20 mins to check me out… not to include they overcharged me once again. When asked to speak to the manager Paul, the staff at first said he was not there, then 20 mins later when the front desk couldn’t seem to credit me my money I asked to speak to Paul and come to find out he was in the back office the entire time. Paul still was unable to credit me my money back to my card so my next action will be to report it to IHG. This was by far the worst Holiday Inn I have ever stayed in and I am completely disappointed. Please don’t book here it’s indeed not worth it!

Disappointing is the best word I can think of to describe my family’s 2-​night stay at the Holiday Inn Express in Meriden, CT this past weekend. We were a party of four adult women in town for a family reunion. First level of disappointment came at the price of our room– almost $ 145 per night. For that price, I expect to have a very nice stay in a very nice room with many added amenities, including free breakfast, a pool and exercise room, and a business center area to print documents and access the internet. Well, Holiday Inn Express in Meriden tried, but they fell disappointingly short. When we entered our room one of the first things we noticed was the 3 bath towels 3 hand towels and 2 face cloths in the bathroom. Remember I mentioned were a group of 4 adult women– and would obviously need more towels. We called down to the front desk but were told we were at our «maximum allotment» of towels. (!!) The second ding became obvious at breakfast the next morning at the «full breakfast bar» which did not include eggs (they ran out the day before), not enough milk for the cold cereal, watery orange juice and a lot of sad hungry faces. Then at the pool later that evening we, again, faced a towel shortage (they had NONE in the pool area), and broken showers in both the women’s and men’s wash-​off areas (we tried to shower off in both!). Their business center area was out of printer paper so we were unable to print off our boarding passes, and then to top it all off, the door to our room did not latch properly at times and we came back from dinner one night to find it slightly open. (Thankfully no one had walked in and all our stuff was still inside the room). I have never had so much wrong with a room that I had paid this amount of $$$ for. For what we paid, they could invest in a few more towels and buy some eggs!

They put me in a room with construction in the hallway, which was okay, except the hall was filthy. The Internet was spotty and kept demanding sign in. My bathroom had a quarter roll of toilet paper and no spare. My room was sparsely furnished with no fridge, and poorly designed so that I had to move the sleeper couch to see the TV from it. And the «complimentary breakfast» was toast and bagels. Really?

I made the reservation on 9÷11÷14 but called to add an additional day (arriving early) to my reservation on ⁹⁄₂₉. When I arrived, I was informed that my reservation was for 2 nights, not all 3, and was actually cut short AND more expensive.
Leland, the evening front desk manager told me that the woman I had spoken with had made a mistake and because I was ‘changing my reservation’ the prices had changed. I told him that I ‘changed my reservation’ two weeks ago, and this was the hotels error, not mine.
He proceeded to take my card and authorize me for incidentals, which inexplicably came out to $ 187 despite my stay only being three nights and incidentals are only $ 25/​night.
I checked in anyways, went to my room and called the 800 number to get the situation resolved. The woman I spoke with, Heather, was extremely helpful and told me that what happened was that the person who changed my reservation at the hotel had created a second reservation for me rather than modifying the original one. She contacted Leland at the front desk and told him what had happened and then instructed me to wait for the front desks response.
The evening went on, and I went to bed. When I woke up in the morning, I had a $ 204 charge for a second reservation on my bank statement. The front desk was helpful and told me a manager would contact me soon.
When the manager, Letel, contacted me, he said I would only be charged $ 85 a night as originally stated, and that the second charge would be refunded.
I was indeed charged the correct amount for the ‘extra’ night I had actually reserved two weeks ago, BUT the charge came from my Visa which was SUPPOSEDLY taken for incidentals, not the extra night. I’m glad I had the money to cover that because I DID NOT AUTHORIZE this hotel to charge my room to that debit card.
I was mostly satisfied with this outcome, except that my bank had almost $ 600 in pending charges from this hotel, several hundred more than what I was budgeting for on my trip.
In addition, now I am going to have bill payments bounce while my refund gets transferred into my account because I’m $ 204 short due to this error.
This mistake could have had huge consequences for me financially while I was on my trip. Adding a night to my reservation should not be this difficult or cause this much trouble, and I do not plan on staying at this, or any Holiday Inn hotel again.
Update:
Corporate responded and apologized for the inconvenience and hopes that I will consider other IHG branded hotels again. Yeah thats not happening.

Was just ok. TV wouldn’t work until you unplugged it from the wall and plugged it in again each time you turned it on. There was an ironing board and an iron holder attached to the wall but no iron. Inquired at the front desk and was told that they don’t have any irons. Had to attend my meeting in a wrinkled shirt. Breakfast bar had items that looked like scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, but I am pretty sure they were made of something else…
The bed was very comfortable though

Nice clean updated hotel. Restaurants are a short drive. There are like 300 channels on the tv without an up to date channel listing. That’s my only complaint.

When I walked in the guy who checked me in was so kind and then when I when to my room I was impress at the quality it was. And talk about costumer service. It was great!

Holiday Inn Express is my «go to while on the road» place. Rooms are always clean, good sized, comfortable beds, exercise and pool, and the best breakfast of them all, for a very competitive price.

The place is clean and what I would expected from most of the Holiday Inn Expresses that I have stayed at. Its quiet and the room was extremely comfortable. I would stay here again and would recommend it to others.

The hotel was a standard Holiday Inn Express. It is fairly new and our room was nice. Some of the staff weren’t very pleasant, and we had a disagreement one morning because they ran out of the breakfast at quarter till 9, even though it was supposed to go until 9. I went up and said something to the front desk, and a lady wearing what looked like a nurses uniform told me that basically I was too late and tough. The breakfast is the main reason that I regularly stay at the Holiday Inn Express, and I had never had that experience before. The saving grace was the guy (with braids) who was preparing the breakfast. He basically asked me what I wanted and went back and made another round of breakfast for us and the other 3 or 4 families who were waiting. He was the saving grace for the other staff.