Holiday Inn Express & Suites Cincinnati Riverfront by IHG — Hotel in Covington

I generally enjoy staying at Holiday Inns with my kids because of the consistency of cleanliness and quality but this location is a little off brand. Location is a little sketch, with not one but two liquor stores literally in the parking lot. No restaurants or convenience stores like I'm used to. But there are a few a short drive away and plenty of options for food delivery so we just didn't leave much.

The ladies at the front desk are awesome. Cheerful, greeted us, helpful, all of that. My issues were with the room. At check in we were told we had a newly renovated room so that was nice to look forward to. The first thing I noticed though, was our tub had a lot of little black hairs all over it, like someone had shaved their legs in the shower before checking out and the tub was given a cursory rinse without a real cleaning. Usually this would really irritate me but we were so tired from driving that I just cleaned the tub out myself because I didn't have the energy to complain as soon as we checked in. I started looking around, and was pretty grossed out by the bathroom floor. For a newly renovated room, it was kind of grungy. Behind the toilet hadn't been cleaned in a long while, for example.

We booked a king room with a sleeper sofa for 4 guests. There were no linens or pillows in the closet for the sleeper sofa. No big deal, so I went down to the desk and asked. Very nice lady said she'd bring them up. Thought I'd check out the pool while I waited, and ended up overhearing housekeeping telling her they were in our room closet. Well, they weren't, that's why I had to ask. Again not a big deal. Took the kids to the pool later, which was ok, but the area around the windows and chairs was filthy. Dead ants, dirt, hair, spider webs with dead bugs, all along the bottoms of the windows and wall. Kids didn't notice, of course, so we had a good time.

We got our bed dressed for the kids and started on showers for the night. As I'm getting my three year old washed up, I realized the tub wasn't draining and nasty stuff was backing up into the water. Couldn't find any information on the phone to call the front desk. Dialed 0, no answer. So I went downstairs again, to tell them. Maintenance came up and worked on it for about ten minutes. Said he had to go get something to pour in the tub. The guy was very, very nice but had to come back up three times, waiting ten-20 minutes in between to let water drain. Not gonna lie, I really just wanted to get my pajamas on at the time but had to wait. Issue was finally fixed, so about an hour later we got to take our showers. Went to brush our teeth; sink didn't drain. I was tired and annoyed at that point so I just left it and it eventually drained. We were only staying two nights, otherwise I would have asked for a new room.

All in all, it wasn't a terrible experience, just not great. I switched to being a IHG rewards member from Quality hotels because the cleanliness of Quality and Comfort Inns had gone downhill over the years but I found this Holiday Inn Express to be comparable to those. Really wish I had picked a different location but the price was right. Lesson learned!

Again, I want to stress that your staff is great, from desk to maintenance to the lady cooking breakfast. Even the work crew performing renovations was nice and worked hard to stay out of the way. I just expected available linens, clean bathrooms, drains that work, and a clean pool area that other Holiday Inns...

This is a tough review to leave, as several of these items were out of control of staff, but as a stay in a hotel, I believe some responsibility must be given to the hotel, as we paid money to stay and expected a certain result.

We stayed 3 nights in the area, with 2 adults and 2 children (10yr old).

We arrived just in time for a tornado warning/watch. We parked and walked in, and the awesome staff asked us to take shelter in the back room. They were responsible and had our safety in mind, but of course we didn't love this exciting way to arrive. But we didn't hold them responsible for this, and oppositely appreciate their professional response.

Our room was clean, nice, and decently equipped. We had just come from another Holiday Inn Suites in Indy so noticed many things from the previous hotel that were not in this one... paper towels, soap at sink, not enough towels, etc. But a very nice layout in the room. Just could have used some more amenities. Pool was nice and not over-chlorinated which was a nice surprise, but was very cold. It was also extremely dirty, to the level where people had used their fingernails to scratch their names in the muck stuck to the white tiles. Gross.

Breakfast first day was good and had no issues, but second day there was a complete lack of tables and chairs for the amount of people. Also they were struggling to keep up and the food was cold. Similar experience on the third day but was disappointed to find exactly the same food as the day before. Not much variety. The coffee was really bad too, please consider changing your brand to something better (and I got fresh coffee).

OK, the worst part. Complete loss of power on the final night, starting around 1am. Phones didn't charge, couldn't use bathrooms, no lights, no AC (room got uncomfortable) and beeping noise in hallway. Didn't sleep much at all, and I went down to the lobby (stairs) and was told they didn't know what was going on. Finally power back on around 6am, followed by the fire alarms going off 10min later. We all evacuated rooms where we sat for 1.5hr, waiting for the fire department to go through every room in the building.

This is tough because this isn't the fault of the people working, who were awesome. But this power outage was local to only the hotel and didn't affect any other businesses in the area, so I do feel responsibility was on the hotel. And the fire alarms going off, similarly were in error as there was no fire, so this is also responsibility of the hotel.

Finally we were able to return to the room, back up our stuff, and we left. Checkout was awkward as the issues with power loss and fire were not even mentioned by the person working, and NO APOLOGY or even acknowledgement was made. This should have been handled...

Night Staff was flippant and rude!!!! The two parking spaces in front of the EV charger were taken, by non EV cars!!! I asked at the desk what could be done and they said “well parking is first come first serve” but they weren’t using the EV charger they just parked in that spot they said well it’s 1am so there is nothing we can do about it (basically saying to me too bad we don’t really care) I asked if someone was parked in a handicap spot and they didn’t have a handicap sign what would happen and they said “well it’s only us here and we’re not going to call to get anyone towed” so I parked behind the cars that were blocking the charger and put a sign on my car with my room number on it so that when they wanted to leave they could ring me so I could pull into that spot. My car is compact so I wasn’t “blocking the parking lot” just the two cars in the EV charging spot. They called my room at 2am telling me they were about to tow my car because it wasn’t in a spot and it was blocking the parking lot (not true there was plenty of room in the lot to maneuver the only thing I was blocking was the two cars in the EV spot. This charger is a slow charger I would need to charge my car for a few hours so I can have enough power to drive home that’s why I picked this hotel because a charger is provided I could charge my car while I slept and it would be ready in the morning for my 2+ hour drive home if the spot opens up at 9 or 10am I’ll have to hopefully pull into that spot before someone else and then wait several hours for my car to charge when the whole point was to have it charging while I slept. It’s not even being used by someone else!!! It just sitting there being blocked. Now it’s 2:33am and I’m sitting in my car because I’m worried that the front desk won’t notify me if the spot opens up and I could miss the spot again. It’s ridiculous! Why is the charger so close to the door making it a “prime” spot? Of course ppl are going to park there because they want to be closest to the door. Why not put the charger in the back murder corner where it’s terrifying to park that way no one would park there unless they need to...