Holiday Inn Express & Suites Dripping Springs - Austin Area by IHG — Hotel in Dripping Springs

My wife and I recently attended a friend's wedding just outside Dripping Springs and he had blocked off rooms at this Holiday Inn for his out of town guests. Thank goodness we reserved early because Dripping Springs is the Wedding Capital of Texas and, therefore, the rooms filled up quickly. The Memorial Day long weekend was very busy and we would check-in on Sunday afternoon, the day before Memorial Day.

We arrived to check-in at this Holiday Inn roughly two hours before the wedding and were greeted by a long line of customers at the front desk. We finally made it to the front desk clerk after a twenty minute wait and were informed that our room was not ready. Apparently, the hotel was hosting two weddings over the busy Memorial Day holiday. Moreover, there was a serious staff shortage because three housekeepers did not show up to work. Consequently, many rooms were not ready for check-in. My wife and I now had only an hour and a half to get ready for our friend's wedding. We asked to speak to a manager and were told that she was not available until the next morning. We had no choice other than to check-in when the rooms were ready later. When we asked where we could get ready, the embarrassed desk clerk recommended the hotel lobby bathroom. I really needed a shower, but clearly that wasn't going to happen.

My wife and I rushed to the bathrooms only to find them full of other wedding guests, dirty, and lacking basics like toilet paper and paper towels. We did the best we could with what we had and, even though we rushed, we ended up missing the shuttle bus to the wedding. So we drove to the wedding flustered and stressed. Before leaving the wedding later that night, we called the front desk to ensure that our rooms were ready for check-in and, thankfully, were told that they were. We drove back to the hotel, checked in, got into our room, and went to sleep for the night.

The next morning, I once again asked to speak to the manager but was told that she was not in. I left my name and phone number for the manager, took a business card because I was dead-set on talking with her, and checked out. She returned my call the next afternoon. I patiently talked her through our predicament, after which she admitted to the mistakes, apologized for the problems, and offered a full refund. Even though the wrongs could not be undone, I greatly appreciated her offer of a full refund.

On a positive note, the front desk clerk was very kind and understanding. None of these problems were her fault but, in spite of this, many customers were being really hard on her. She dealt with them professionally and is to be commended for her grace under pressure. On another positive note, this hotel is new, clean, and well kept. The rooms are comfortable, though the walls are a bit thin and we could hear our neighbors next door.

I was unpleasantly surprised that this hotel did not have a manager on site over the busy Memorial Day holiday in the Wedding Capital of Texas while the hotel itself was hosting two wedding parties. Furthermore, the hotel should have immediately hired temporary staff when they found out that three of their housekeepers were absent. I hope these issues will not...

Read the other 1 star reviews and trust them. This place will cost you more in your time than it is to stay there.

I reserved 9 rooms months in advance for a school event. Called them the week of to adjust our reservation down to 7 rooms and confirm we were coming in on Friday as a school, etc.

Friday I miss a call while driving at 4:30pm, I call them back at 6:30 when we stop and they try to explain that since I didn't answer my phone (while driving students) they had to give away two of our rooms, and they claimed they didn't know we were a school (see above when I told them on Tuesday). They also booked us different styles of rooms and only 3 of them would be double queens with pull out couches instead of all 7. The biggest problem with all of this is they sounded like they were blaming us for not answering there call by saying "because you didn't answer we gave your rooms away" and that "we didn't know you were a school" which they did. They also insisted they knew they were overbooked the day before and didn't call us until 4:30 that afternoon.

We were able to shuffle people around to only need those 5 rooms and a room they booked for down the road at the sleep in. They checked us into those rooms. We get to the hotel and get our keys and I give them our tax exempt form, they apologize and insist they will make everything right. I thought that would be the end of our problems, I was wrong.

The next morning around 11am we find out that they expected (without ever informing us) that we would be bringing the people staying in the other hotel back to their hotel for the last night of the stay having them repack all of their things, etc. At no point was it ever discussed that that they would even have rooms available the next day. We eventually just extend the room at the other hotel because we didn't want to give this place anymore money because they are awful.

When we went to check out we found that they had not infact handled the tax exempt so I had to wait for them to adjust the tax on each of the rooms, and then we found that they had overcharged us for the non-suite room, the front desk staff was unable to fix this so we had call back to the manager later in the day to get it done.

In general they did try to make things right by slightly discounting our stay and paying for the 1 night at the other hotel for the 1 room.

The lack of communication, the blaming of the customer for problems that they created, in all it took over 2.5hrs on the phone and in person over 3 days to deal with all the issues that came up.

Now on to the facilities which were also terrible.

On the phone they said construction started Monday but from reading other reviews they have been doing it for longer.

Only 1 elevator seemed to be working so wait times were long and the floor was extremely dirty.

One of our hotel rooms didn't have a handle on the bathroom door, but we found it in the bathroom and were able to click it back on but the bathroom wouldn't lock.

There is no AC in the hallways so they feel like 80+ degrees all day and night.

This hotel gives the entire IHG and Holiday Inn brands a terrible name, they should either be under new management or removed from the...

Let me start by saying that the hotel itself is perfectly fine. It's pretty much what you expect at a hotel in a smallish town in Texas.

That being said, the biggest letdowns during my stay were housekeeping and the hotel breakfast.

Regarding housekeeping, I had several issues:

1. The second night I was there, while I was laying down trying to go to sleep, I felt what seemed to be a string get tangled up in my toes. When I turned my light on and got a closer look, it turned out there was a length of used floss that had found its way into my bed and caught in my toes. Needless to say, it took a while to get to sleep after that.

2. One day I came back to the room after being out all day, and saw some dirt tracked into my bathroom. I hadn't gone hiking or anything so I checked my shoes to make sure and they were pretty clean, so I figured it was tracked in by housekeeping. Regardless, I was tired and figured I would just let the housekeeping staff clean it up the following day. Unfortunately, it took 3-4 days for them to actually clean the floor of the bathroom (after the first day I kept leaving it just to see how long it would take to clean up).

3. On the second day of my stay, I ran out of tissues. No big deal, they'll just refill it tomorrow, I thought to myself. Again, it took 3-4 days for them to put in a new tissue box.

4. One day during my stay, I found a roll of trash bags on my nightstand. Not a big deal, but just another indicator of how inattentive their housekeeping staff is.

5. One last tiny thing - I had left washcloths in the shower to be collected and changed out and they left them in the shower when they "cleaned" my room.

Each one of these things, by themselves, wouldn't be a big deal at all. I know that people are stretched thin and each one of these things has happened during other hotel stays (except maybe the bathroom dirt thing). But the fact that they all happened during the same stay is very discouraging, to say the least.

And breakfast - what can I say about breakfast other than the fact that they technically had breakfast. Having stayed at a pretty similar Holiday Inn Express in a small town in Florida just two weeks prior, where I was actually impressed by the complimentary breakfast, the same can't be said for this location. Every single thing they had was either overcooked (even if they had just brought it out), undercooked, or watery. Just not good.

One other minor thing I'll mention - for most of my stay, the market selections were pretty terrible. On day 5 or 6 they seemed to restock, but for the first few days it was pretty much Doritos, cookies, or nothing. Also, they ran out of bottled water on day 2 and never restocked for the rest of my stay.

Again, the room was fine. But would I stay here again? With another chain's comparable hotel literally across the street?...