Holiday Inn Express & Suites Butler by IHG — Hotel in Butler Township

Horrific Hotel - Worst experience staying at a hotel!

We were staying here for a wedding which is supposed to be one of the most magical and special moments of your life and this hotel gave our group one of the worst experiences I have ever had at a hotel.

Day 1

We show up to the hotel to check in with the entire wedding party and all the gifts and flowers for the wedding. None of the rooms were ready and its 3:15pm and they're supposed to be ready. After 30 minutes of waiting we find out they do not have the rooms we booked nearly 6 months ago. They attempt the put the Bride and Groom in a standard queen room instead of the King Suite they booked for their WEDDING NIGHT!!!!, and try to give them a $50 discount which no discount is going to make right. Its for their WEDDING NIGHT!! Fortunately I did not book with the group and they had my king suite available for my reservation but it still wasn't ready either. At 5:20pm they finally get the king suite ready and we turned it over to the bride and groom. They also managed to find and clean a queen suite which they gave to us right after. Keep in mind its the day before the wedding with lots of things to do and we just wasted 2 hours sitting in the lobby.

Now comes the next disaster, no working elevator and no luggage carts. We waited about 20 minutes for them to attempt to reset the elevator and resolve it but it worked for one trip and broke again and apparently this has been an outgoing issue at this hotel. So, we had to carry all of the flowers and gifts (30+ trips) up to the 2nd and 3rd floors. Also with no carts to even help get the stuff to the stairs. Now were burning up more of our time and energy when we have much more important things to do.

The elevator was never fixed the entire weekend and all of our elderly guests had to walk up and down the stairs and many had to be assisted. All of our guest had to carry their luggage up the steps to their room. All with zero help from the hotel staff.

As for our rooms, our phone didn't work and the fridge wouldn't stay closed. The key cards for most of our guests rooms continued to stop working which caused a lot of people to continually have to walk down and up the steps to get new keys.

Day 2

Conference/Meeting Room - We are supposed to have the room for the whole day at no charge, but they are only giving it to us from 8am to 3pm for $150 or $400 for the whole day so we picked 8 to 3. We get access to the room and it is very apparent someone is living in the room. Fridge full of food, mattresses everywhere, dirty towels, personal hygiene item throughout the bathroom and nothing was cleaned. They had no one to resolve it and we had to clean it ourselves and leave the mattresses in the room. See our pics attached of the girls getting ready with the mattresses in the background which pretty much ruined all of the photos. We had a paid photographer there to take photos with this junk in the background.

Day 3

The next disaster. We wake up to several running engines at 630am. So we wake up and start to pack the cars to find out the entire lot is being repaved and there is wet tar everywhere, including the loading area behind my vehicle. (This was also the reason for the running engines) Many guests didn't notice the tar or what was going on and got tar in their vehicles from the luggage wheels.The tar also ended up on the sides of many vehicles as well. It also was tracked throughout the entire hotel.

Time to talk to the manager about our experience. The so called manager acted unprofessional, was poorly dressed and even yelled at the bride. We found out at the end of the conversation that he wasn't even the manager but he was the operations manager for 4 hotels and just filling in.

Things he said to us:

He said handled our reservation which he did not. They did not want our business because they already had an another reservation...

Read the rest of the reviews they all say pretty much the same thing; unkempt, run down, tired, dirty property with apathetic staff who could care less. Breakfast buffet was meager at best and when they ran out of their signature item, the cinnamon roll, at 9:15 they substituted pre-packaged lousy cinnamon pastries. This isn't new information on this property's review history. ||||What happened to me in my hotel room was the most outrageous uncalled for invasion of privacy and infringement on safety I've ever experienced at a hotel in all my life. Please read on...|| ||Check out time is at 11am and I was behind schedule getting out of the room- this is 100% on me and i take responsibility for that. I needed to take a quick shower before I left so at approximately 11:30 I put the do not disturb door hanger on the door. When I got out of the shower, dripping wet and drying myself off, the door to the room is flung open by a male housekeeping staff member without knocking and completely ignoring the do not disturb sign. ||||A normal reaction upon seeing a person still occupying the room dripping wet in a towel would have been to shut the door immediately and apologize profusely for crossing that boundary. Not this person. Instead, what they did was try to force themselves in the room, pointing at a piece of paper that appeared to list the rooms that needed to be cleaned and gesturing to his wrist that I was in the room past check out time. ||||I am now in a state of shock and disbelief that this person is going to argue with me in this compromised state so I told him to get the hell out and I shut the door. I'm saying to myself "did that just happen" because I cannot believe the lack of sense demonstrated by this staff member. Then all of a sudden I hear a pounding on the door. It's the second most unprofessional person of the morning screaming at me through the door saying "Sir you need to leave right now you are an hour past check out time" I told her I was trying to get out of there and that they had no right to barge into my room and violate me in such a way. She went on to say that they thought I had left (which is total BS because clearly I didn't leave). ||||Humiliated and furious I gathered the rest of my things and hurried out of the hotel without getting a copy of my invoice or addressing the issue with the staff members; they clearly showed who they were and to debate how out of line they were would have been pointless- no sane person would have done what they did.||||Hotel travelers have an expectation that when we rent a room from an innkeeper we will be welcome, we will be safe, our personal belongings will be secure and we will be respected as a paying guest. What I experienced was the complete opposite. The staff member involved, the manager involved and anyone at this hotel that even hears about this incident should be ashamed of themselves. I don't care if it's 5 minutes or 5 hours past check out time, you do not treat guests that way- ever.||||The final insult and demonstration of their indignance is they actually charged me an additional $50 dollars for late check out. ||||This is all you need to know about how this property feels about...

possibly the worst experience I’ve ever had at an IHG hotel or holiday inn express. It honestly makes me even more upset being a spire elite member and just how badly the hotel staff treated my family and handled the situation.

Most years I’ve spent 200+ nights in hotel rooms. I know how to book a hotel. The stay started off ok, I’m a pilot and wasn’t going to be able to arrive with my family, I called the hotel and was helped by someone who was very nice and helpful and assured me that my wife would be able to check in with no problems even though I’d made the reservation on my account and through the IHG app.

The check in wasn’t a problem, but they were not given the room I booked. Which, in itself, wouldn’t have been the end of the world, but the room was awful. Moldy, smelly, the carpets were wet, paint was peeling off the walls, and no one slept that night. The biggest issue; however, was that the room was not the room that was booked! I booked a king suite and in the description on the IHG app it specified that it came with a pull out couch and that it slept 4 people. (4 people were also specified with the booking) The original room came with only a king bed.

Rather than providing good customer service, or even just feigning sincerity and saying sorry to appease us while rolling their eyes, or even being courteous, the manager decided to blame the problem on us. Saying that I’d booked the wrong room, and when literally showed the IHG app on which it gave a description of the room said “that’s an outside website and isn’t an accurate description of the room.” It was the IHG app! If they don’t have accurate descriptions of their rooms it’s their own fault!

Again, that’s besides the point. Anyone in any way involved in customer service and is a professional would have simply been nice about it instead of accusatory. It should have been “omg I’m so sorry here’s your new room, enjoy your stay.” Not a drawn out accusatory argument where a manager tries to explain how really we shouldn’t be complaining because you can fit 4 people in a king sized bed.

A new room was given and a night was comped, but sadly the story doesn’t end there. Upon checkout another employee decided to make fun of my wife for booking the wrong room. I have never in my life been in a situation where someone in a service industry was so adamant about shaming a customer into admitting they were wrong.

While I appreciate the one comped night, I’m just quite upset and the entire experience, process, and the fact that I spent far too much time dealing with this on my days off when it should have been a simple process. It also further reiterated how mostly useless being a spire elite member is, when you don't even get treated with basic common courtesy let alone any perks. Honestly the staff at this location has no business being in a customer...