Holiday Inn Express & Suites Altoona by IHG — Hotel in Allegheny Township

The only reason I am giving this hotel a two star rating is due to the cleanliness. Extremely clean and maintained. As for the rest of my experience, this is the worst Holiday Inn Express I have ever stayed. I use Holiday Inn Express exclusively when I travel. I have stayed in Jacksonville, Washington DC, Johnstown, PA just to name a few and this place was the worst experience I have ever had with IHG. I would recommend driving a little further to Johnstown to stay there. I can't say enough good things about that hotel. As for Altoona, right from the start at check-in the night time person is horrible! He is younger and everytime you need something or have a question you feel like your bothering him with his attitude. First of all. I stayed here during a cold spell and the heat in the room did not seem to work properly. So I went to the front desk and he (the night time person) said he would put in a request to have it looked at by maintenance the next day. I suspected that he wasn't going to put in the request so I checked with the front desk the next morning before heading to work and as I suspected he did not put in that request so they said they would have someone check it while I was gone all day. When I returned that evening, he was at the desk and I asked him what was done and he said he didn't know and there was no notes left for them to inform them of any work completed. Later that evening, I went back downstairs to inform him that something still wasn't working correctly and he said all he could do is switch me rooms. I asked him if I could go to the other room to set the temperature and I could check to see if it was working when I returned from dinner. This is where he got angry an slammed down the room key and said if I wasn't back in two hours the heat would shut off. This is finally when he told me that each temperature panel in the rooms have a sensor on them that detect movement and if there was no movement in the room it would shut off in two hours. So he told me to hang a towel over the desk chair so as the towel moved back and forth the sensor would sense movement in the room and stay on. WHAT? How stupid is that? Like an idiot. I tried it the next day. It didn't work. So to finish up. They do not have coffee makers in the rooms just downstairs. The printer at the work station downstairs is a $20 relic from Wal Mart that has so scanning feature, and at check-out they could not print me a receipt or even tell me what the final bill was because their system was down. Probably because their WiFi was horrible. I connected to my phone's Hotspot and got faster internet. Think twice before staying here. You've...

TLDR: Brides or those looking to book room blocks beware. Ensure you get all the rooms you need when the initial contract is signed and don’t believe them when they say they can add rooms later. They never added rooms to my block, especially when my block was full 4 months before the wedding and they still had rooms available in inventory. Other hotels in the area were much more accommodating & even willing to give me all the remaining rooms in their inventory.

Full story: I contacted Kim, the director of sales a year out from our wedding date (sept) to reserve a block of rooms since my husband’s family, friends and our bridal party weren’t from the area. Kim initially offered me 10 rooms, which I explained would only cover the bridal party and immediate family. I also mentioned we were planning to hire a shuttle to transport our guests from the hotel to the reception venue, expecting that would add to our bookings. She gave me 15 rooms and told me she would “watch the pick up and add more if needed”. I was reluctant, but Kim was very responsive and I mistakenly believed her. Fast forward to May - I reached out because all of our king rooms were booked and she told me “Even though most of the kings are sold out in the booking link we have plenty in regular inventory.” She kept telling me to tell our guests to call and they would put them in the room type they desired if they weren’t showing up in the room block link. In June, 3 weeks later, I was getting ready to send out our invites and our room block was completely full. I contacted Kim telling her this and asked her to add more rooms to the room block. She told me “At this point because that weekend has picked up so much outside of your block I can't add any more rooms but if guests call we are happy to book them…Yes we have a handful of kings for Friday and about 10 doubles for Saturday inventory at this time.” She refused to ever add any rooms to our room block after our initial contract. Our wedding guests would have easily filled up those remaining rooms, but because she would not reserve them in our online link for our guests’ convenience, they lost business. Ultimately, we went to another hotel in the area that was much more accommodating and gave me the exact number of rooms I requested from the beginning. I’m thankful the other hotel was able to accommodate us, but thanks to Kim we had to have our shuttle drop off & pickup at 2 hotels and our family & guests weren’t all together. I hope this review saves future brides from the headache I had to deal with 4 months before our wedding.

As for the hotel itself, our guests found it very nice and had...

I made a reservation 15 mins prior to arriving, checked in, and walked to the room to make sure it was clean before bringing my luggage in. As I was looking over the room, I got notified from my husband that we booked at the wrong location (here for work) and we needed to book at new location 2 hours away.

Immediately, I went to the front desk to explain the situation to see if she could transfer my reservation to a IHG hotel closer to where I was driving to. She stated that I would have had to cancel last night by 6pm (mind you I just booked this 30 mins ago at this point) to get a refund and she has no way to transfer my stay with another IHG hotel. She then stated that I would absolutely be charged the entire fee for the night and she would not be refunding it, moving my reservation to a different hotel, or giving any percentage of my money back.

I contacted customer service and they stated that they did not have proof if I actually stayed or not. I asked customer service if they could review the surveillance footage from the hotel for the proof they stated they needed in order to issue the refund but then they said that it was up to the hotel to refund me or not. I understand the cancellation policy, however, I feel this could have been accommodated differently.

**REPLY TO HOTELS COMMENT since there is not a reply option -

As I stated previously, I DO understand the cancellation policy, however, I felt this situation could have been handled differently. Also, I did not ask for an early check in and the room was “held” for 15-20 minutes before I arrived at the hotel from making the reservation. The “significant amount of time in the room” you’re referring to was 5 minutes (if that) so I was able to look over the room. But even though the room was not messed up in ANY way from myself due to me ONLY walking around to look to make sure the room was clean, immediately walking back to the front desk, and remaining in the lobby for the rest of the time I was there trying to get in touch with customer service, you chose to tell me that the reason was “because I had already checked into the hotel” as to why I couldn’t be refunded, NOT because of me checking the room before bringing my luggage in.

Higher management can check the hotel surveillance cameras to in fact show the time stamps, and how the manager, Kelsey, immediately denied customer services request to refund or switch hotels with the reasoning being “significant amount of time spent in the room” which was false information...