Holiday Inn Express & Suites Corpus Christi by IHG — Hotel in Corpus Christi

I am a Diamond Elite member (though I was not recognized as such at check-in) and have been staying at IHG properties - many Holiday Inn Express - and don't think I have ever written a poor review nor have I ever experienced anything close to my stay at this property.

It began at check-in. I was 15 minutes early and was told that my King Room was not ready. I asked when it may be and she said maybe 4pm (instead of 3pm). When I questioned, I was told "well, you are trying to check in early" (again, only 15 minutes early). I told her that the issue isn't that I am trying to check in early because of the fact that she said the room wouldn't be ready for at least another hour, so being 15 minutes early had no true impact on the room. We settled on giving me a double-queen room. No big deal. I was fine with that.

When I got into the room it was freezing. The thermostat was set to 74 and heat was turned on, but the actual room temperature was 61 and only blowing cold air. I called down and was told she would send someone up immediately. 20 minutes later I gave up and went to the lobby. When I got there the same person that answered the phone said "yes, I realized that the room had a heating problem when you called - let's move you to another room". Of course, I wondered why she let me sit in that room for 20 minutes if she knew of the problem.

She assigned me to a different room. I got to the room and neither of the keys worked. No lights, no error messages, etc. I went back to lobby. Another staff member was there when I described the key issue to the original check-in staff member. This woman said she would accompany me with the new keys to make sure they worked. We got into the elevator. She pressed the button for the floor and nothing happened. She pressed several more times, elevator did nothing. Finally on the fourth or fifth time the elevator decided to move. Mind you, this hotel only has one (slow) elevator so I was concerned this may be an ongoing problem, thankfully it wasn't. Keys worked fine, got into my room.

I immediately noticed that the beds were made, but looked like someone had been on them and rolled around. Comforters were crumpled and pillows not in place. But thankfully the heat worked this time.

I went to sit down in the upholstered room chair only to find the back of the chair splattered with what looked to be dried salsa.

The bathroom had several problems:

The sink wouldn't drain well at all. It would fill up while shaving. I had to wait for enough water to drain before continuing my shave. The sink faucet also sprayed water backwards leaving a lake of water on the countertop. I had to continually use a towel to dry off my items. The bathtub drained poorly - within minutes I would be standing in ankle deep water during my shower.

The soap/shampoo/conditioner dispenser came unglued and fell off the wall in the shower.

The body wash was completely empty and the there wasn't even enough shampoo for one washing. Thankfully I brought my own to use when I realized they hadn't refilled the soaps.

Finally for the bathroom, I lifted the toilet seat and the underside was covered in fecal splatter. It was seriously disgusting.

Both nights were very difficult to sleep. The rooms have rather heavy doors with strong closing arms, so even unintentionally, all the doors would slam shut loudly. But beyond that there were kids running around, adults yelling, and lots of heavy foot traffic in the hallway until past midnight.

One of the reasons I like HI Express is the hot breakfast - works well for me when I am traveling for business. This was by far the worst I have ever experienced. In -all- of the HI Expresses there are four hot buffet servers with eggs, meats, gravy, bisquits, etc. This one only had two. One was full of seriously dry and very brown (over-cooked) scrambled eggs and the other was full of even more over-cooked bacon. I like crispy bacon but this was way beyond crispy. Portions of the bacon were literally black and tasted like burned wood - and nearly impossible to chew.

The coffee dispenser was full of absolutely cold coffee - not even lukewarm. It was so cold I can't imagine it was anything but coffee from the day before that sat out all night to get that cold. As I got up to throw away my coffee, she brought a new batch in. This time nice and hot. I added a couple containers of half & half and took a drink. Not only did it smell off, but the taste was alarming. I looked down and the half & half had curdled in my coffee - it was white chunks floating around in my coffee. There are no expiration dates printed of those containers, but the half & half had definitely gone bad.

When I checked out a new person was managing the front desk. She asked how my stay was and I told her that it was very disappointing. She asked why and I gave just a few examples including the poop-splattered toilet seat, lack of soap, and all the noise. She was nice and apologized. She said she would deposit points into my account due to my experience. I didn't ask for, or expect that, but it was a kind gesture. However, no points were actually given to me and its been well over a week.

Given all the issues, can't say I am surprised.

All hotels are a bit different, but I can't say in over 15 years of being in IHG that I have ever decided I would never return to a particular property - until this experience. It's definitely one of the least expensive HIE's I have experienced but for me still not...

I’ve stayed at several Holiday Inn Express hotels over many years of both personal and business travel. I’ve stayed at this particular Holiday Inn express in Corpus Christi because of the location. I’m not sure what has transpired over the last year or so, but the quality of the hotel has definitely diminished. Nevertheless, I did have a good experience with the front desk staff Joe was very friendly and polite. He remembered my name from Phone calls I placed after booking the room. We arrived kind of late to a full parking lot and we were allowed to park under the carport near the front door We were especially grateful for that since we had traveled several hours to get to Corpus Christi. Once we arrive to our floor, however, we immediately sent a smell of what I could only describe as vape odor. It was unpleasant, but that was only in the hallway. The room had other issues to include the toilet flushing on its own every 5 minutes. It was late, so I just shut off the water supply. The room was very damp, but we assumed it was the air conditioner running hot so we turned it down with the hope that the moisture would go away. It did not. It was late after midnight And we were tired, so we were not about to switch rooms. At around four in the morning, however, we were disturbed by knocking on the door. Our room was right next to the elevator so we assumed it was kids playing so we went back to sleep as nobody was at the front door. In the morning, the moisture in the room was still there, but we had a busy itinerary ahead of us so we didn’t worry too much and headed to breakfast and check out. I got to the front desk to turn in the keys and notified the attendant of the discrepancies in the room and disruption overnight. The attendant was very polite and apologized for the inconvenience. When we arrived at the dining area, we discovered breakfast was not up to par. A few things were missing such as eggs and sausage. The only thing on the hot plates was bacon. We were told the food would be brought out in a few minutes. We waited about 20 minutes and had to leave on an empty stomach. I hope this was a rare occasion because my experiences at Holiday Inn Express have always...

We arrived at the hotel at nearly 5:30pm. Check in is at 4pm. After waiting in line for nearly 15 minutes to check in we were notified that our room was still not ready. The person at the front desk said it would be ready in 5-10 minutes. I was a little upset because I had called around 2pm and asked if we could check in early and the lady on the phone said the room wouldn't be ready until 3 and that was the earliest we could check in. The front desk person stated they were understaffed, which I understand is difficult, but also isn't my fault. Well by this time it was almost 6pm. We were finally able to get into our room around 6:15. The room was nice and the beds were soft, but there was a very musty smell, the sink wouldn't drain, and the toilet would only flush if you held the handle down for a while. In the morning, I took my kids down for breakfast around 8 and to my surprise, there hardly anything left. There were 2 burnt biscuits, gravy that looked super thick and lumpy, some dried up scrambled egg bits, no milk for cereal, the juice machine ran out of apple juice and only water would come out. It was absolutely horrible. The whole reason for choosing a hotel with breakfast is to avoid having to pay for another meal, but I had to take my kids elsewhere to eat. In the afternoon, we came back to the hotel after spending some time at the beach and we wanted to get in the pool. The pool was so cold you could only stand it for a few minutes. We went back up to our room to find they came in, took the towels and only replaced them with 2 towels (there were 6 of us) and they did not take the trash or make the beds. We went out again for the evening and when we returned we wanted to do laundry. We tried several times to use the machines but they never started and we were charged $10, which we had to get refunded to us in the morning. The advertise that they have fresh baked cookies in the evening, and of course, they were out of those as well. It was a very...