Crowne Plaza Monterrey Aeropuerto by IHG — Hotel in Nuevo León

As a Platinum IHG member, I do my share of staying at the IHG brand hotels during the year. I'm also a Diamond member with a different chain and have been for several years on a continuos basis.

Unfortunately, during the past week I've had two less than stellar stays at this property. The first one was on Thursday, 8 Jan 15 when I arrived at the MTY airport in Monterrey, Mexico. I called for the hotel shuttle and was told they would be right over. It was a very cold day but I waited curbside as the property is minutes away for the airport terminal. After fifteen minutes I called back to ask if they would be coming to pick me up, once again I was told they would be right over. Ten minutes later I called again and demanded to know if they would come or I would gladly take a cab. Five minutes later they showed up. I asked the driver what had happened and was told he was just informed and they had been in a meeting. Arriving at the property I asked the gentleman Ruben at the front desk what had happened and he stated that I must have missed it the first time and must have been inside. I gave him my hand so he could feel how cold I was from standing outside in the cold and told him what the driver had told me about the meeting. There was absolute silence and never received a comment or apology. I let it go!

I had to go back to MTY this week and arrived this past Thursday, 15 Jan 15 for another meeting. I had one of my team members pick me up this time! I arrived at the property and it was before noon and was told to wait about an hour and that is certainly understandable. At approximately 1500 hrs. I went to register. My friend Ruben was back at the front desk. I asked Ruben to see if he could upgrade me and he said he would. As a Platinum member I was not even placed on the 2 executive floors, my card was not activated for those floors and could not even go to the gym on the first floor!

In the morning I went to get my card activated to go have breakfast at the lounge on the top floor and I was the only one there at about 0830. A gentleman greeted me and minutes later disappeared. I stayed approximately 15 minutes and left with a cup of coffee. There was no bread and once again felt that there is no attention to detail and service was not a common practice.

I've left a message for the manager along with my business card and will let provide an update if and when he contacts me.

The hotel is nice and the staff is professional with some exceptions! However, most of the staff are not very friendly and one just doesn't feel welcomed! There are so many options nowadays, I will not go back to this property. It did not use to be like this and do not know what has happened to cause this change. Perhaps it will go back and perhaps most people don't care. I travel too much and believe a hotel should provide good customer service and treat their frequent guest so that they keep coming back and I will not...

First of all, it should be a 4 stars hotel but it seems not to be. The room is wide and the equipments inside are good but the TV signal is poor and it seemed to be too many time without maintenance (clean fitted carpet, paint wall...). The breakfast is almost well done but in some day not all the food was ready to be consumed (marmalade missing) and the juices were really bad done (too much water and few essence); that is something should not be happened in a 4 stars hotel. During breakfast often happened that the table wasn't well prepared (no spoon, dirty napkin). The food in the dinner is really poor, anything that could be really tasted...poor quality and not well prepared at all. The gym is really really poor, a small room with 4 tapit roulant (2 broken), 2 cyclettes, 2 elicoidal machines, 1 total training machine composed by 4 different parts to train yourself but 1 was totally broken, 1 almost all broken, 1 worked but not well maintained so not easy to use (lubrication missing for example), just 1 worked well. Any of the broken equipment was fixed during my stay and i don't know from which time they were broken and i don't know when they will be fixed...it seems that the hotel administration doesn't take care about them. The SPA is probably a joke, there is the sauna but it's always switch off and so it's cold, if you want to use it you have to switch on by a timer located outside the door, but the sauna should be always switch on to let it be hot, so even if you switch on, it remains cold for a long time...thus impossible to use. Last but not least the shuttle service was not always available even if we reserved it in advance, but in this case the reception was kindly to let us get a taxi free of charge. At the end i think there is a big problem of good organization... The staff is very polite...probably this is the only good thing i can underline...even if not all speaks english very well (4 stars hotel!). Even during the check out there was a problem with the expenses and the invoice. So i cannot recommend it at all to anybody but i don't know how the other...

I’ve stayed at this hotel for years, but just recently I’ve been having issues there. Let me first start off by the shuttle bus to & from the airport. They’ve gone from every half hour to every hour. Not that big of a deal, as long as it’s every hour. Coming in at midnight on Sunday to wait 90 minutes for the shuttle is unacceptable. I’ve had shuttle drivers from other hotels come by 3 times, before the Crowne shuttle arrives. I’ve complained about this issue but nothing has been done, only an apologetic e-mail. I’ve stopped complaning and have been taking the competitors shuttle to the Crowne.

Now the room temperature. I walked into my room to find it freezing, so I adjusted the thermostat to 25C, this should have turned the cooling off. I froze the night and pulled the sheets off the second bed to try and warm up, that didn’t really help. The next day I kept the thermostat at 25C to see if the room would warm up, it didn’t. I called maintenance(room temperature was at 16C) and they came to look at it. They said give it a half hour, I didn’t and asked for a new room. They gave me a room and I asked if it was away from the elevator. The person behind the counter assured me that it was. As the elevator doors open, the room was in plain sight of the elevator. I went back to the front desk to speak to the manager, she was unable to assist me in getting another room. So I walked next door and booked the rest of my trip with another hotel and cancelled the week at the Crowne. I’ve spoken to several people in my organization about the Crowne and heard of other bad experiences. I’ve rescheduled my future hotel stays to put the Crowne at the bottom of my preferred list. Hope this review helps in any future decisions...