Tag Archives for Holiday Inn.
A Holiday Inn clerk abandoned the front desk, came back furious, and told a Hawaiian couple to “go back to Mexico.” She then ended their prepaid stay on the spot, leaving them to find a room elsewhere late at night.
Holiday Inn will stop offering any cooked-to-order or à la carte breakfast on December 1. Every property in the U.S. and Canada moves to a standardized buffet, and the brand’s internal guide shows just how minimal that operation can be. Hotels only need two staff to run the entire service window, the required menu is tightly limited, and pastries can legally be held and reused for up to 24 hours.
A reader staying at the Holiday Inn Oklahoma City Airport says he found what appeared to be mouse droppings near the vending machines and asked the hotel to cancel an upcoming prepaid reservation. The property refused, and IHG backed the decision, telling him that prepaid terms still apply. That leaves the guest stuck with a stay he no longer feels comfortable taking—an example of how non-refundable rates offer little protection when a hotel’s condition doesn’t match what the brand advertises.
Back in the fall I wrote about the Holiday Inn Express in Elko, Nevada charging $12.95 extra per night in addition to the room rate for electricity. They were also charging an extra 3% for guests who wanted to pay with a Chase IHG One Rewards credit card. This hotel apparently keeps changing what the $12.95 is for.
A woman arrived at the Holiday Inn Bangkok Silom two days ahead of the rest of her group. She asked the hotel to place a 14,626-baht (≈ US $400) authorization hold on her card to cover all four rooms for a five-night stay.
But she also told staff to collect payment from a relative when he arrived.
IHG has its Holiday Inn breakfast manual for managers on the web. It sometimes amazes me what hotel chains leave open and ungated. And there were some fascinating insights in it about guest preferences and also how to get guests to spend more in the morning. 30% – 50% of Holiday Inn guests eat breakfast on property, and they serve approximately 27 million breakfasts per year.
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. And oh that toilet.
In September 2021 a reader made a reservation at the Holiday Inn LaGuardia Airport for the nights of August 28th at 27,000 points and August 29th using a credit card free night. The reader shared, “we were so excited to be at the US Open this year, we booked almost a year out at a hotel I’ve stayed at and liked.”
This hotel apparently closed – yet they went into their account to print a copy of their reservation to have it with them on arrival a day before check-in. The bookings were there.
The new IHG One Rewards elite program offers a huge improvement in elite benefits.
Diamond breakfast doesn’t start until June, but some hotels are rolling it out early, giving us a window into what to expect. Benefit delivery is always tough, and some hotels are going to be more generous adhering to the spirit of the program than others.
Some hotels offer rates that include breakfast. You need to figure out how likely to buy breakfast you are – and how much you’ll save. Sometimes the ‘breakfast included’ price is really just the room rate plus the cost of breakfast. And if you skip breakfast even one day, for instance you leave too early in the morning on the day you check out, you come out a loser on the deal.
But some hotels during the pandemic have been pulling a breakfast rate scam on guests.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
