Northwestern University law professor and associate dean Paul Gowder shares a story about the disconnect between hotel marketing and reality, as he checked into the Holiday Inn Rochester Downtown.
He’d made a nonrefundable booking using Chase points to attend a wedding at what seemed like “the cheapest hotel from a reliable..brand” and found “an active construction site” with rooms covered “in plastic wrap,” constant drilling and a closed restaurant – none of which was disclosed on the property’s website.
The root of the problem is that it’s an active construction site. Not only is the hotel under renovation, so is the area—the city is repaving the road it’s on and doing some kind of riverwalk construction on the other side. So even to get into the hotel you have to dodge tar trucks—and apparently it’s been like this for months. Once you get in, you find that half the hotel is covered up with plastic wrap and there’s drilling going on constantly. The restaurant, needless to say, is closed. And there signs everywhere informing guests of things that are broken, like one of the two elevators.
When I got up to the room, matters were even worse. Several of the rooms on my floor were also covered in plastic wrap—I pray for renovation rather than for fumigation. The room looked over a big central courtyard with a pool… which was emptied, filled with garbage and a dead bird. The shower makes a screech like the damned whenever you turn the water on. The toilet bowl is stained brown (always a good color for toilet bowls). All told, this hotel looks like something out of Deliverance.
In the end he left after two nights, forfeiting the third night and spending $250 on another hotel. And, oh, that toilet:
Last year I wrote about a reader who made a booking at the Holiday Inn LaGuardia Airport through IHG. However, the hotel closed and went into foreclosure and was rebranded as “The LaGuardia Hotel,” only IHG never told him. According to the guest, it “seemed like it had been converted into some public housing.”
Meanwhile the Michigan Attorney General cracked down on a hotel group taking bookings for a closed hotel and walking guests to another, cheaper property within their portfolio and without any refund.
Just because you see something on a hotel chain website doesn’t mean that you can trust it. And increasingly hotel chains are really just booking websites anyway, offering loyalty program members up as ‘leads’ to the actual owners of hotels who operate independently through franchise agreements (and with varying degrees of oversight for compliance with brand standards, eroding the value of the brands they represent).
It’s important to check out the latest reviews for properties where you’ll be staying. And of course those get manipulated and faked, too! So I look for consistent themes across reviews, and consistent elements in photos, to build a mental model of the property where I’m considering staying.
Here, while I’ve found IHG customer relations to be generally poor at handling complaints, I’d still submit one. And I’d submit one to Chase Travel as well, because the guest relied on their website in making the booking. Surely they should receive a refund for a stay where they didn’t get the experience advertised.
The Hyatt in Rochester is horrendous. It’s too bad. Rochester may be a dump but the area around Rochester with the Finger Lakes is spectacular.
Okay, obviously this is pretty bad but let’s see.
1. Rochester, NY – not exactly a cosmopolitan world-class city. I’m just saying you need to go with the right expectations.
2. The hotel has a 3.8 average rating on IHG’s own site. That should temper expectations even further.
3. The hotel does disclose on IHG.com that renovations are ongoing, albeit only in the lobby.
4. Renovations are unpleasant, but it sounds like the issue was mostly cosmetic. The hotel seemed to fulfill their basic obligations of delivering a private and habitable room for sleeping. Bad views, screeching showers, and brown toilet bowls (assuming not poo) are par for the course in a downmarket hotel.
Final verdict:
The root of this guest’s problem is in thinking IHG/Holiday Inn is a “reliable brand” — it’s definitely not. IHG’s InterContinental brand is reliable, but the rest are very iffy and I wouldn’t stay anywhere without reading a plethora of recent reviews attesting to appropriate hygiene and professionalism.
IHG is better than Wyndham, Choice, Red Roof Inn and Best Western. But we don’t even talk about those brands.
Holiday Inn isn’t a great brand, but that’s pretty ugly.
Disclosing that the restaurant is closed is quite important, though. I don’t like hotel restaurants, but have stayed at conference hotels where it’s the hotel restaurant or…you’re bringing your own food and hoping there’s a fridge.
One thing this makes me think of, though. If you have an issue, regardless of brand, it’s always better to call the hotel.
Earlier this year I got Not COVID (Tested negative, but was sick as a dog, suspect it was HMPV) two days before a conference where I was staying at a Renaissance. Corporate told me I had to pay for the first night while I struggled to talk to them on the phone with no voice…because the cancellation policy was 72 hours (This was a conference. I had no real choice about where I stayed unless I wanted to be walking around downtown at midnight).
Called the hotel and they canceled on the spot and thanked me for not coming to their property when so obviously sick.
Corporate drones don’t have discretion. Property managers DO.
I stayed at the Hyatt last year and found it serviceable. Reading this I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet. I almost booked that holiday inn for this weekend to boost my ihg elite nights but decided to try the brand new Hampton Inn that’s across the street from the Strong Museum and avoid downtown altogether.
IHG is devolving lately in general. Even corporate level support has adopted a “we ignore your inquiry” policy by not responding to issues. Shifting a fair amount of business to Hilton, until they start to fall off the rails.
Fun fact: that hotel was built as an Americana Hotel (American Airlines’ former hotel brand). It was a Stouffer and Radisson before becoming a Holiday Inn.
I’m originally from Rochester and have stayed in a bunch of hotels there on visits back. For a relatively wealthy city, the hotel situation is unrelievedly dire. Each hotel we’ve stayed in was worse than the other, especially the Hyatt. The suite we got (on points) had a “closet” you couldn’t hang anything larger than a shirt in! My wife was not happy about that.
My wife and I have using IHG pretty consistently over the past 10 years and, though going to several during renovations, have never been disappointed. In fact, most of our stays were exemplary. I wouldn’t draw much concern from the inflammatory criticisms made towards stays at IHG hotels in general in this article.
We stayed there in June. Yes, it was total construction site. We are staying at the Hyatt in September. Usually, the Hyatt is pretty good – category 1.
It’s happened to all of us at some point … tho this one seems incredibly awful. A) don’t book non-ref rates. B) keep up with the reviews so you can find something else if necessary. C) don’t book ‘the cheapest’ anything, anytime anywhere.
I will continue to tell of my bad experience with Holiday Inn Kensington Station – London. I politely complained to IHG Americas (since I live here) and to IHG Bath (international headquarters) and never got a proper courtesy of reply. As mentioned above, I also complained to Chase since I had an IHG Chase card. I won’t stay in an IHG property and cut up the credit card.
I worked for a Holiday Inn franchise in Denver DT back in college. We were (as management) told now that if hotel does not meet hotel standards that IHG would take the signs down in a heartbeat. Corporate used to check our hotel yearly to see if we were in compliance with IHG-Holiday Inn standards. Definitely report this to as high up the ladder you can get it to including pictures. You should get a refund in the least.
The new motto of travel it seems id”let them eat cake “.From flying, rent a cars, and other staples of modern traveling, corporate greed, is seems is what seems to be come the new montra. If you can, with others, try to fly private (shared with others of course). If using one brand of hotels buy a few share of stock if you can. can (at least you’ll have a better voice and concern when getting compansated, In some places you can rent a small truck when the big rental companies “run” out of reserved vehicles. One has to think outside the box unfortunately since companies don’t seem to care anymore.
So what else is new. I once had reserved at a Townplace Suites in Battle Creek, and found a construction site, that had just started building the hotel.
And Marriott has a clause that their reservation guarantee compensation is not valid for hotels that aren’t yet built.
I contacted the owner, and they finally gave me some points compensation.
Demonstrated the the big brands can wash their hands in terms of responsibility.
2 of the 3 times I’ve used Chase points for a hotel I’ve arrived to a similar situation. Services closed, terrible management, etc. Chase defends the hotel to ridiculous degrees. One time they finally took all my details, and then emailed me the status of an airline issue they would investigate for me. Clearly their way of making me go away. (They never got back to me about their made-up airline issue.)
I’ll never use Chase Travel for a hotel again. So far, flights have worked out OK.
I’d change cards, but I figure all credit card travel services are probably at best at 50/50 bet these days.
When ever you book a cheap hotel you get what you pay for. OP had the option of leaving on Day 1. The hotel has NO control of construction in the town nor do they know the schedule.
I have been at a hotel in Miami and the city has the entire street under construction but nothing was being done the 3 days we were there.
Sh1thole could be used to describe not only the hotel but also the city of Rochester.