Holiday Inn Express & Suites Elkhorn - Lake Geneva Area by IHG — Hotel in Elkhorn

The intention of this review is to warn others about the experience we had booking this hotel for our wedding. I would strongly suggest looking else where for wedding accommodations. We reached out to this hotel several months before our wedding. When the wedding date was approaching, we tried to get into contact with the individual who was in charge of room blocks. Our emails kept getting bounced back and when we called the hotel, the response was that they didn’t even have our wedding blocked off. It was too late to find any other accommodations with such short notice. After trying to get in touch numerous times via phone and email, we were finally able to speak to someone and get everything sorted out. We were told everything was good and our guests could book online or by calling. Well, it turns out that the majority of the people who work at this hotel do not know how to reserve rooms for a wedding block. We had wedding guests calling over and over again trying to book a room while also contacting us and letting us know so we could try and fix the issue. Our guests got multiple responses, ranging from “we don’t even have this wedding in our system” to “you need to contact the manager between 8am-4pm to book a room” and “I don’t do bookings for wedding blocks”. Several of our guests were also told there were no rooms left and they had to pay a higher price. Again, we had to contact the staff multiple different times to get this issue sorted. During our guests’ stay, someone working for the hotel did tell a guest that they don’t have hospitality services so our guests were concerned about getting dirty rooms. There were also requests made for additional towels which were never addressed. Apparently a room for 4 people is only allowed 2 towels? Guests had to ask multiple times for a cart to help bring their items to their rooms. When one of our guests asked about getting a crib for their room, the response was “I’m new and I don’t know how to do that”. Our guest who asked about a cart and a crib was treated poorly by the staff. When this guest asked if they needed to see her ID when checking in, staff’s response was “no, I’ve seen enough of you.” Overall, this experience was way too stressful for us. This is the last thing you want to deal with when planning a wedding. I should add that we are very easygoing people and understand that things happen sometimes. But it was just issue after issue that we had to deal with. If you have a small group or are traveling by yourself this may be the right fit for you - but this hotel absolutely does not have the ability to accommodate larger...

I have to recommend to NOT book with this hotel for any events, or work with their manager.

We had a signed contract with this hotel for 50 rooms at a specified rate, however they made every effort to not honor the terms of our contract.

Multiple people reported to us not being able to book using our link provided by the hotel so they called the hotel directly asking to book on our block rate, but were informed that the block was full. Other guests were informed that they would not honor our block rate. We reached out to the hotel about this but did not hear back from their sales director for roughly 3 weeks.

In discussion to expand our block (within the terms of our contract) we came to find out that not even half of the 50 rooms we had blocked were actually booked. Further, in these discussions to add more rooms to the block, we were told that there were no more rooms left in the hotel period and that they would have to “build more rooms”. When we referenced the contract we had with them - the sales director, claimed that we had no contract until he was directly presented with it. And when we presented the contract to him, suddenly there was no more need to “build more rooms” and he magically found 7 more rooms. Additionally we personally booked more rooms to later transfer to our wedding guests, and these were added to our block.

Several different excuses throughout this chronicle were given, and no responsibility was taken for dropping the ball.

The icing on the cake of unprofessionalism was the day of check in: they canceled the room for the parents of the bride. Management has claimed in responses on here that this is not the case, however their front desk employees informed us when checking in that it was canceled, and when we asked them by whom, they told us their sales director’s name.

Overall, to book a block with this hotel, we had to fight tooth and nail over every detail. Whenever they could screw us out of our agreed upon rate to sell their rooms at a higher rate, they would. Their sales director actively violated the terms of our contract, and personally canceled the room of the bride’s parents, all the while claiming ignorance. This hotel CANNOT be trusted to honor any terms they agree upon.

EDIT: upon reading other reviews, it appears that we are the second wedding party within the past 12 months to face such horrible issues in contracting a block. Clearly, efforts made to improve since this previous incident have been...

I wish I was leaving a little better of a review. To start, our party had requested both online and ahead of time an early check-in as we were traveling out of town for a wedding. I understand these are not guaranteed, but one of our party was told a 1pm check-in time the day before, and the other was told 2pm for their room (we had booked two rooms). We left our home town at a time to arrive at the hotel by 1pm and did not get ready for the wedding (which was at 4, asked to arrive by 3:30) because we were told we could check-in at 1pm. We arrived at the hotel around 12:45pm and walked to the front desk. We were not greeted whatsoever, just glared at by an older woman at the front helping the front desk associate, Tina. We also waited an awkward amount of time before even being acknowledged. When we were finally acknowledged, with annoyance in the unnamed woman's voice - I wish I caught her name (this his NOT about Tina, she was kind to us when we came back to check-in again and her co-worker was not present at that time), she was extremely rude and made us feel as if we were a nuisance or really disrupting whatever it was that she was doing. I'm used to being met with a smile and a cheerful, "How can I help you?" Not a cranky, "What do you need?" with a glare. The gentleman in our party timidly said we were checking in for our hotel, we were told 1pm. She responded, almost cutting him off, and super rudely "2pm is all I can do today." We ended up being almost late to the ceremony because we were rushing to get ready as we had no access to any alternatives while waiting for our room. I know that is out of the front desks control, but we would have planned accordingly had we known we weren't going to get an early check-in like we were told the day before. I'm mostly upset about the way we were treated by the grumpy woman at the front desk. I have worked in many customer service positions and she needs a refresher course on how you treat, especially greeting, polite and friendly customers. Save that attitude for the jerks you encounter. Not a great first impression for your...