Holiday Inn Express & Suites Bogota DC, an IHG Hotel — Hotel in Bogota, Capital District

I have a mixed feelings about this hotel.

I list positives first:

As a diamond, I was offered a free early check in.

As a foreign visitor, the taxes were proactively waived according to the law.

As a frequent guest at IHG hotels, my devices were connected to their wifi by themselves without entering password.

Breakfast starts early enough at 6, till 10 the morning I was leaving.  It had a lot of local dishes, and quality was high compared to other holiday inn Express worldwide.

Cleanliness and the bedding of my room was good.

The water filling station at the dining room.

Angie over WhatsApp was particularly prompt and helpful, after I reported issues that I'll describe below.

Now, minor annoyances:

I didn't find any guest directory, even a QR code (but there was one for the minibar and the restaurant), so I couldn't know basic info like breakfast hours unless I called or went to see the sign at the restaurant.

With Bogota's temperate climate, I didn't like running ac.  Everytime I came back to the room and insert my key, AC started running again, so I had to turn it off every time.

There were no compliment bottled water in my room.  After I called to inquire, I learned the tap water was potable, so it made sense not providing compliment bottled water.  A moment later, I was delivered cold water without requesting, so it was a nice touch.  In Latin America, I find potable tap water is rare, so the notice in the room would've been helpful.

Now negatives:

This hotel prices on their website and in confirmations in USD, not cop.  I suppose they use usd to hedge against the fluctuations of cop, and I've seen it with hotels in other countries.

At check in, I was quoted in cop about 4% (or 4,150/USD) higher the spot rate, which was around 4,000/USD.

The funniest part was, when I asked if I could give, for example, USD 100 cash, then if I received COP 415,000 cash.  I was told they use the posted rate on the wall, so I'd have received only COP 385,000.  While using the arbitrary lower rate for cash exchange at hotels are normal practice, using the arbitrary higher rate for your advertised and confirmed price in USD isn't.  All other hotels I stayed who used a foreign currency for their prices, used spot rates found on xe.com, Google, oanda, etc.

As I understood, it was the policy enacted by their local hotel management, so I chose to escalate it to IHG, instead of requesting to see the manager.

I fell asleep, but someone tried to enter my room and I missed a call.  I was then contacted by WhatsApp, Angie agreed to recalculate by the spot rate and give me a refund in a month to my credit card.  While I appreciate her resolution, a month is a long time to wait for the refund.

I hope they stop this practice going forward, not nickle and diming from unsuspecting guests.

The second issue was the clogged toilet.

In my understanding, the problem with the toilet in my room wasn't the incoming water pressure, but the reserve tank didn't hold enough water.  When flushing, even after keep pressing the button, the water stopped flowing in, that prevented the fecal matter from getting pushed through the pipe.  Some toilets have small and large flow buttons, and you can imagine mine had only small.

The maintenance staff told me all other toilets in the hotel are like mine, but it wasn't the case with the different room I stayed last year.

I was offered to switch rooms, but I was there only for the night, so I declined Angie's offer.

Another negative was that housekeeping tried to enter my room more than twice, which I was staying only for a night, so I didn't put the don't disturb sign on my door.

Angie explained to me that I checked in early, so I was offered housekeeping in the afternoon.  The same thing happened again the following morning.  If I was away, the cleaning was...

We love Holiday Inns in Colombia. They are very upscale and have the best staff that are accomodating and genuinely interested in taking care of you. I stayed in this hotel preCovid and was amazed. This time around, though, I think that the hotel wasn't ready to open and rushed into it compared to the other Bogota hotel. The staff were excellent and very helpful especially for our family. Where I saw a major differences from Parque 93 were

1. Meals weren't quite ready to serve with honestly low quality food prep (order is taken night before, but then they serve the standard option regardless so unfortunately we wasted food).

2. Most appliances in the room were unplugged so we had to figure that one out including lights and refrigerator.

3. The lobby was still being prepped on the third day we were there (TVs in the lobby were suddenly being turned on, etc.).

4. Gradual improvements seem to happen while we were there just from small details like the placemats at breakfast appeared on our last day. Not a big deal but it's those details that set IHG Colombia apart.

Back to refrigerators not plugged in, we purchased lunches for the next day that then had to be thrown out because we didn't notice it was not plugged in (in anticipation for guests arriving I suppose). We lost about $30 worth of food which was upsetting. I would have honestly expected something for this because it was part of our trip planning and budget and did not even consider that the room would not be ready. (I would like someone to call for this issue).

Again the staff were excellent in taking care of us and this is more a reflection on the hotel management or organization I think than the...

Booked a Suite, since the added kitchenette seemed a nice bonus and I hoped for a roomy and fun bathroom.

The bathroom was roomier, though the shower was rather smaller than the one I had in a previous standard room, which for a couple meant it was very cozy.

The room itself was nice and elongated along the balcony. There was no furniture on the balcony, which detracted from its usefulness. The room itself conspicuously lacked a desk to work on with a laptop, the couch could work, but when travelling I prefer to put the laptop on a desk and leave it there whilst in the room.

The bed slept nice, and one could easily watch the DirecTV TV on it all day and night.

The kitchenette was a washbasin (the faucet seemed to provide water with some soap), microwave and provided plates, bowls and silverware; which was very useful. The mini-bar fridge's freezer was barely big enough and covered with ice to hold a couple of ice-creams, but one could make do with it.

The staff is attentive and nice to interact with, even in very badly broken Spanish.

Only strange thing was an unmentioned Medical Insurance tax at check-out, I did not had that on previous visits, plus it wasn't mentioned at check-in nor on the website, where I prepaid my entire stay. It was promptly removed, since my own travel insurance...