Holiday Inn Carlsbad - San Diego by IHG — Attraction in Carlsbad

To start with, the staff is wonderful. Great customer care, and nice too. Very impressed.

The grounds are beautiful, and curiously shared with an extended stay so some days were clogged with kids and families, and some with convention attendees. We didn't know whether or not we were invited to their weeknight bbq, esp as it was in a shared area of the central court.

Sad that the staff had no idea what the types of trees and plants were. I knew some and had hoped to learn about several others.

We explored the surrounding shopping centers, but amusingly the staff also weren't aware of many of the places around them, especially the non-chain restaurants.

The rooms were lovely and comfortable, and other than one day quiet. However, there were a couple of essentials missing that took it a notch below excellent, and can easily be corrected.

1. No in-room safe: They are not responsible for theft, but there is no place to store computers or other items. They say there is a safe deposit box downstairs at the desk, but I can neither lock nor unlock, and only 1-2 boxes fit a small laptop (and all were gone when I asked). This needs to be corrected, because if the house safe is where this is stored, and my safe deposit box remains open while it's in there, if something happens it becomes the hotel's fault and I have no recourse.

2. There is no place to hang wet items. The shower curtain rack hangs over the floor, so towels or bathing suits hung there drip onto the floor, creating a safety hazard. A rack or bar of any kind in a safe place would be appreciated.

3. my guest noted no stopper for the sink, nor the tub. That meant no bath, but also no protection for contact lenses or anything else being dropped into the sink.

4. the fridge had been turned off, and we spent a lot of towels and time wiping water off the floor when we first opened it to stash some food items.

I can't remember the 5th item, but overall it was a lovely stay in a lovely venue and it was deeply...

The Holiday Inn is usually pretty reliable even in Asian countries, where we currently live, and so I expected this Holiday Inn, from my home state of Cali, to be first rate. It sure was not. The customer service was so pathetic. And no bottled water anymore? We had to pay for bottled water? Is this how it is now at hotels in California. This is a non-issue in China. ||The room was decent though and I can’t complain about that. It was needed after a long day at Legoland. We needed to rest because we had the San Diego Zoo next morning. The hotel seemed to be kid friendly with plenty of things to do for them during the day time, but we were there at night and would leave early the next morning. Our children wanted to go to the pool and it was open late so we went and were disgusted. On our way there, there were many critters on the floor. The critters turned out to be huge cockroaches! I did not inform my family of this or else they would have freaked out. We went into the jacuzzi or smaller of the two pools, which seemed fine. When we were going to enter the larger pool, there was a disgusting film on the top layer of the water and the desk informed me the pumps stopped working and we shouldn’t be in the water. I told them they could have warned us about the conditions of their pool and marked it conspicuously. I have and will post pics of all this too and it will be interesting to see what reply customer service has for this when I have photo proof. We bathed quickly, went to sleep and in the morning had their buffet breakfast which was not all bad. It looked okay, we tried, but the taste was just not there and it was cold. The server kept asking if we were going to tip, lol. She was a quite aggressive woman. I responded and said it was a buffet, I already paid the hotel fee and service fee, but yes, I was going to tip. If we return to Carlsbad, we will certainly not stay...

This hotel appears to be fairly new and everything from the lobby to the hallways and our guest room looked new and clean.

The front desk staff were very friendly and professional however a couple of the housekeeping employees we met in the hallways were less than friendly when greeted with a "Good morning" by us. I don't want this negative observation to reflect poorly on all the housekeeping staff because there were a few ladies who were very nice and acknowledged our greetings with a big smile and a warm "good morning". I only wished all the housekeeping staff did the same, especially when greeted by a guest.

The quality of the beds seemed average at best but they certainly were not the worst I've sleep on during previous hotel stays but they could have been more comfortable in my opinion. One of the two queen sized beds in our room made a loud squeaking noises whenever getting into, out of or moving while lying on the bed which was a little annoying when trying to sleep. We reported it to the front desk staff who were very friendly and promised to have maintenance look into it. When were returned to the later that evening, we noticed the squeaking noise was lessened but was still present. I guess a little less noise is still better than nothing at all.

The hotel has two elevators but it appears only one was operating the entire 7 days we were there. This made for long waits for the elevators, especially when the hotel was full. Not a show stopper by any means but something to look into by hotel management.

Overall our stay at HI Carlsbad was very good and pleasant. If the small things we described were corrected, they'd earn 5 stars from me. Not looking for perfection but as a frequent hotel guest for business travel I'd say they can improve in a few minor areas.

I would recommend this hotel to others as a very good...