Crowne Plaza Amsterdam - South by IHG — Hotel in Amsterdam

I am rating Service 5 for those who read this review as I met couple of excellent people working in this hotel. Nigerian gentleman preparing eggs in the morning. Spanish lady in the restaurant, other young man from south America in the bar and ultimately Dutch lady addressing my first complain from my first stay. All excellent individuals in a place, which is missing general manager connecting the dots. As a IHG Platinum client I am rating everything else 1 star. Not being able to stay in my usual hotel in Adam, I booked € 330 plus room on Executive Floor with lounge access. The rooms and the hallways in this hotel meet vacuum cleaner as often as a teenager would use it … See pictures. Unique about all this was. Once I informed the reception by phone - the lady recognized the problem … „static electricity generated by walking with slippers over the synthetic carpet collects the hair of previous guests“ and releases it on the stone imitation of a bathroom floor. Back to my comment on excellent personnel. The lady mitigated the issue. The room was fresh for my second night … whether Platinum or not I would expect offer for changing the room. I only suspect the other rooms would not be better. Further I received personal email and a offered I believe for a drink or small token in terms of points. Not really impressive enough to take away shock what a € 330 room on a executive floor gives you. During this stay I took 10 seconds glimpse of the the Executive Lounge - is day light robbery, I am not sure what the operator aims to achieve with that. I decided only to write this review after my second visit. There were couple of dis-satisfiers which ultimately led me to share my experience. Example of these were : renting an umbrella in Adam ? Small gym commented by other guests in a relatively new property in an not attractive Amsterdam area with lots of space to build offices is a joke. I would expect properly sized gym or give people free access to one of the commercial gyms around the neighborhood. My message is clear I will stop here. Go to this hotel for excellent people, demand low price, its not worth more than any Holiday Inn charges to stay within the IHG booking system and check cleanliness of the room before unpacking your luggage. My recommendation to the owner of this property would be hire a new GM. Kind regards from a regular guest of IHG & One Harmony...

Checkin was nice. Management was very welcoming. The room assigned was decent but represented no upgrade at all (despite being a top tier IHG member, I haven’t been upgraded in the last 10-15 hotels). The hotel was decent at communication but more often than not failed to follow through on requests (printing, pillows, water, coffee). Hotel service was nice but just bad. There’s one older lady meant to service the restaurant and the lounge, so saw her twice in passing. No requests or eggs/coffee orders were possible, though the hotel offered it. Due to the absence of any service whatsoever, breakfast both days consisted of cereal.

The hotel is quite cheap:

1 - The hotel charges €2 for umbrellas

2 - The Club Lounge offered one kind of wine, one kind of beer, no hot food, and no cocktails for its “happy hour.” Breakfast was very meager with dry, old, styrofoam eggs, and no one working. The hotel says you can order eggs but despite trying three times each morning, not one worker was ever visible/available to make an order.

3 - Laundry is obscenely expensive, and the hotel charges double on certain days. So just to launder my pants I was going to pay 25 Euro. I went out and bought a new pair of pants for less than the 25 Euro it would have cost to clean.

4 - The location was fine, but taking Uber to/from downtown daily ending up costing more than 100 Euro/day. Uber took 30-45 minutes just for a ride into the center (and was a 20-30 minutes). Next time, I mjght was well pay the extra cost for a hotel in the downtown.

5 - The hotel banned its own balconies “for you security.’

I don’t understand the Dutch nanny-state policies. While marijuana is easily available, The Netherlands has banned slim cigarettes despite the fact that they’re more healthy than normal ones. The Netherlands require seatbelts in back seats even though this has been shown to not always be safest. And according to the hotel, the country has banned balconies in hotels, stating gravity is a security threat....

As a long standing IHG member I booked 2 rooms months in advance for 13/09/2023 - 18/09/2023. The were held on my credit card linked to my IHG account. My colleague arrived in Amsterdam a few hours before me after a long 14 flight. When he went to check in to his room, he was told the room was cancelled last minute and he could not check in as there was no rooms available. Reason given that the credit card associated with my IHG account that had made the booking had expired. I arrived a few hours later and when I landed my colleague rang me to say our rooms were cancelled. I immediately called IHG while getting a taxi to the hotel. IHG said that indeed my credit card had expired, and I gave them the same credit card number again with the new expire date as it had just been posted to me. Then IHG said they could get us each a room for one night, but only one night. When I got to the hotel, there was a lot of fuss and finally myself and my colleague were give rooms for the night, even though we had both booked for 5 nights. The reservation manager had conveniently gone home by this stage so there was no one to talk to. Next morning at breakfast, the reservations manager told us that he had magically arranged for us to stay the full 5 days, and that he was so amazing he even got us the same rate, wow!! The bit that was very disappointing was our rooms were cancelled without any warning, or a call to ask for the new expiry date on my credit card. Despite being the top level of IHG loyalty member, the hotel showed no loyalty by cancelling our rooms and not letting my colleague check in. I had also booked the club room access, nobody at check in bothered to explain where it was or any benefits at all. Terrible customer management and customer service. Not what one would expect for loyal IHG members. I think some serious checking on the abilities of some hotel staff are required. As this sort of behavior will tarnish what otherwise seems like a...