Holiday Inn Express & Suites Charleston Dwtn - Westedge by IHG — Hotel in Charleston

I have absolutely never had such a negative experience at a hotel and I can’t imagine all the factors that made this situation happen. We arrived to the hotel at 10 pm (mind you check in was at 4). We were told there were no rooms clean at the time. There was a crowd of people receiving the same information. The woman at the desk (no name tag though she later told me her name was Del) was obviously very frustrated with the situation and ran out of empathy for the customers who similarly were frustrated. No time frame was given. Supposedly, 123 rooms were checked out of earlier in the day and there were only two housecleaning staff who were assigned 21 rooms each and that apparently was more than usual but still not enough to cover the need. Al this information seemed to be provided to satisfy customers and was reiterated numerous times throughout the couple hours I stood in the lobby waiting. Additionally, we (the mass of people waiting in lobby) were informed they were “trying to find the general manager” who was supposedly in London. To make matters worse, there was no hot water in the hotel for at least an hour and the maintenance man was woken up to come fix it. All this almost unbelievable situation was now being placed on my family, which consisted of my husband and I with our 6 month old baby who had just flown in from Alaska thinking we would stay at a convenient, close, name brand, reputable hotel near the airport. Well, again we were never given a time frame for how long it would take to get our one bed room which I had called to confirm numerous times in the preceding weeks. I had also called in advanced to reserve a crib. Now, after 2.5 hours of being told they were “finding” a room to clean, they offered keys to a room with no crib. I asked housekeeping who later brought a crib and we were finally settled into our room after 1:30 am. The crib had paint chips with rusty metal and a torn mattress (I do have photos). I made due with blankets brought from home to make shift a cleaner safer place for our baby carrying the burden of this disaster on my family for making the worst reservation in my life. So here we are having paid for a room we couldn’t even get into for half our stay. The hotel in itself was in disrepair, though it was apparent the staff were at least trying their best. That said, NO a staff were wearing masks despite a sign in the lobby stating it is required for everyone to wear. Customers were also not asked to wear masks. My husband appropriately deemed the hotel as a “covid breeding ground” which was reinforced as absolutely no precautions were taken to ensure breakfast was sanitary or safe. On at least 5 occasions I asked to just be refunded so we could leave and drive to a different hotel near our destination in Carolina Shores. Each attempt I was dismissed by Del who repeated she’d find a room and leave. I was calm and cordial to the staff, which was obviously led to them ignoring me while customers who shouted and cursed got rooms first. I was only given a room after staff noticed me silently crying (because of my baby being in this lobby with people all standing around with no masks, not to mention one man who was blatantly stealing beer from the hotel fridge). Another man took three bottles of water without paying which staff were aware of and just shrugged. All in all the whole scene was something you’d see in a movie because of simply how terribly it...

We arrived early at 130pm on the 19th. They had a power failure and We was told to come back in a hour, so we set in the lobby for a hour and came back and was told that system is still down, come back in a hour. We had no where to go so we set in the lobby again. Now it is 330 we come back and we where told again that they are still working on it but what I don't understand is that that they were able to verify all my info including my CC on file but couldn't check us in. Instead of just putting us in a room and getting with us later to do the check in, we were told that they are starting a list of everyone waiting and that they would call us when the room is ready. We ended up getting a uber to downtown to get a bit to eat. By 730Pm we had not heard from them yet. So at 730pm I called the front desk to see if we can check in yet and I was told that they had called everyone and I should listen to my voicemail. This is when I got upset. The lady at the Frontdesk just lied to me and argued that I was called. I told her that I had no missed call or a voice msg from them and that I can prove that we never received a phone call with the call log on the phone. She still told me that I was wrong. There was no reason to argue with her and I asked her if the room is ready. She said yes and hung up on me. When we got back the lady at the front desk apologized for the young lady for the way she spoke to me and told me that she would refund our points that we used for that day back to my IHG card. I have yet to see them. This is just the beginning but our room was nasty, the bathroom had mold and no matter what you would do the water would leak out of the shower on to the floor so we had to use our towels to clean up the water. Went to the front desk the next morning to get extra towels and I was told that there are none to give out. How does a hotel of this size run out of towels. We found some towels in the pool area. Checking out they tried to charge me for parking when I was in the Diamond Elite parking space the whole time we were there. This has always been a free benefit that I have never been charged for. I can go on and on but it is just...

Chaos. At check in the manager was apologizing to another group because they had been given an occupied room to check in to. We were then checked in and given a room. They asked me to run my credit card even though I booked with points. We went to the room, our keys didn't work, we went back and got updated keys. We opened the room and it was a handicapped king room. We are a family, so need two beds. Went back to the front desk, they said our reservation said accessible king. I showed my reservation was for two queens. He checked, we had been checked in under the wrong name and reservation. He gave us keys to the right room. We go to the room, it is fine. Then I realized that they had used my credit card to pay for someone else's hotel room! Went back to front desk and they removed my credit card from the other room. Then we realized that we left our son's water bottle in the original room and it took waiting over an hour at the front desk for someone to get the water bottle for us. During that time I heard someone very upset that they had been charged for something on their room that they didn't actually purchase. I think the front desk staff is just a total disorganized mess.

Not as major, but the four times we attempted to check in we were never greeted as platinum elite members, we were not told about breakfast hours, we were not told where to park, or literally anything else. They just said, "Okay you are all set." The fourth time when I pointed out that they charged someone else's room to my credit card, the manager finally got involved, apologized and gave me a sundry item for free. The whole thing was so far off from a typical hotel check in experience and presented some serious security concerns.

Other problems: The bathrooms are very small and in need of renovation, tub was moldy. The wine and beer by the ounce feature advertised online does not work. We could never connect to the WiFi. Parking is $15/day, which of course no one told us at check in or while giving us a parking permit. Elite members are supposed to be offered a hotel perk of some kind and that...