Holiday Inn Express & Suites Florence Northeast by IHG — Hotel in Florence

I frequently stay at this hotel for work and normally it is a great place to stay. What few problems I have encountered have been fixed to my satisfaction or higher. However, during this visit there were SEVERAL children staying in the hotel for a baseball tournament. I understand the excitement of playing sports, traveling with friends, and so on from being a child myself and as a parent when my son played sports. HOWEVER, there is no way my parents and/or the chaperones would have allowed me or other children to: run in the hallways, jump on the beds (overhead quite the story during breakfast about that night of excitement), throw food down in the hallways, REPEATEDLY ring the doorbell (handicap rooms), yell at each other from one end of the hallway to the other, sit at the tables in the breakfast area long after I finished my meal while others could not sit down to eat, and my favorite example of how rude and disrespectful the behaviors reached--throwing a sports drink bottle at a hotel employee.

I would like to suggest that the hotel either not allow these teams to stay, charge extra and hire security, have additional staff members, and/or rent the entire hotel to the teams so other guests do not have to endure the experience.

I will give credit to the manager and staff for doing everything they could to address the problems. The first night the running and yelling lasted well past 11:30 pm. The next night, things were quieter (still loud--just not as loud) and the noise ended earlier, and the third night also had improvement. Our final night there was when I had enough and yelled down the hallway at 9:30 to ask the people to stop yelling at each other and to be quiet so people could relax and sleep. It was a very quiet night on our floor. :-)

Kids will be kids, but it is the responsibility of the adults with them to help them learn how to act in public and take the needs of others into consideration. There is no reason for the behaviors we were forced to endure. Plus, I am guessing that the baseball league would not approve of these behaviors. In my area children and parents must sign a code of conduct each year. Maybe this organization should either enforce the one they have, or implement one with these teams.

The hotel has a great indoor pool, small exercise room, single washer and dryer, comfortable beds, clean rooms and common areas, snacks for sale in the lobby, & a free breakfast with several choices (e.g. pancakes, omelets, bacon, sausage, turkey sausage, french toast, toast, bagels, yogurt, grits, oatmeal, juice, coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and more.

It is located near several restaurants and only a short drive for shopping.

I would recommend this hotel to anyone, BUT I highly suggest checking to see if there are any events in the area that will cause large groups of children to stay. PLUS ask for the 3rd floor so you can't hear people walking/running above...

Let me start by saying this is one of the only hotels, I know of, to offer a king suite with 2 tv's! If you have kids, this is huge!! My experience with staff over the phone was less than desirable but dealing with them in person was no problem at all and check in was quick and simple. The only issue I had with check in was noticing that my member pricing was not put in initially but they fixed it as soon as I brought it to their attention. Food was nothing spectacular but that's due to COVID and I give them props for serving any kind of warm food at all! Now, for the room, it was huge, it met all our needs and could have been perfect, except it wasn't clean. There was a kids toothbrush under the bench, toothpaste and other splatters on the bathroom door, black hairs on the toilet and bathroom floor. The floors didn't appear to have been vacuumed and the pull out sofa had crumbs in it. The desk manager came up and cleaned the room up, vacuumed, put on fresh bed linens, and gave us a discounted night for the issue. Once we were able to settle into a clean room it was nice and comfy. My only complaint was the extra trouble of having to speak with a tech dept. to hook the PS4 to the wifi. I've never had to that before and it was an added inconvenience. There were kids loudly running the halls but that didn't bother me because I couldn't get my own kid to be quiet inside the room! Overall, it was an okay stay, but I'm not sure I'd choose it again over the one across the street. This was my first experience with this Holiday Inn and the poor job that housekeeping did didn't leave a good first impression. I've stayed in quite a few Holiday Inn hotels and they've set the standard for what I look for in a hotel but this one let me down. As an added note, I did take photos of the room but I feel no need to share them and remind you, while I wasn't completely satisfied with the room and hotel itself, I am very pleased with how the desk manager handled it, the discount was fair and I feel he went above his duties in...

BEWARE The management was extremely rude. There was an unforgivably nasty lady at at the front desk. She refused to provide here name when I asked for it to call corporate. Burnt scorched eggs for breakfast with flies buzzing around the food. It was very insanitary. There was chipped paint in the bathroom. Fridge did not cool well. I could see daylight at the back wall around the air conditioning unit. It was open and exposed to the outside. It seemed unhealthy and potentially an unsafe spider or insect hazard. The Jacuzzi was not working and blocked off like a construction site. The pool was very small. The work out room was about a two person sized space. There was additional room but it would be uncomfortably close quarters with more people. Other staff was super friendly and apart from the extremely rude manager and the few problems mentioned the site was adequate and located wonderfully. I would recommend not visiting here until the management issue was handled, the pool area was repaired and the air conditioning units were inspected and sealed up from the outside for safety. This is an honest review created by a trained professional. I retired from appraising property after more than 20 years of professional licensing. I am now a consultant and provide secret shopping services, I test staff and review properties for problem areas, I provide business and financial auditing services to help businesses avoid costly problems. In addition I provide outside consulting on a various business, financial, and security matters. I am a highly educated well trained consultant and I can provide credentials if needed. I have noticed that it appears that this company actively works to have honest reviews removed. I have to assume that there are other problem areas that I did not discover during my brief stay. However, I can only comment on what I saw. I would be very weary of doing business with the people at this location...