Holiday Inn Express & Suites White River Junction by IHG — Hotel in Hartford

I hate doing this, but our stay at Holiday Inn Express in White River Junction was absolutely awful. I don't understand how IHG continues to offer this franchise their branding because the standards of this property were so low and it makes me not want to trust other IHG brands as I travel. This will be long and I hope it will dissuade others from booking this property because the only way they will do better is if they aren't selling rooms. They're fine to let us stay in subpar conditions because demand is high and they don't have to do better.

I'm not a fancy person--I did not expect luxury when I booked a 9 night stay. I expected a clean, comfortable place to plant myself as I traveled through the region. When we arrived to check in at the stated check-in time (3 pm), we were told they had to check which room we'll be in and to hang out in the lobby. Two hours later, they were still not ready to get us our room. We were friendly and patient and told the clerk that we were going to run errands and grab food. We didn't get a chance to freshen up or rest before having to go out in the evening because they couldn't clean our room in the six hours since the last person checked out. When we got back, our room was ready--yay!

The good? The room was large and it was nice to have that kind of space for nine days so we weren't on top of each other the whole trip and it was clean enough--that one day it was cleaned.

The room was freezing the first night and the next. There is a thermostat in the room, but we learned that each individual room cannot actually control their own temp. inside the room and that the heaters had not been switched on yet, so their advice was to turn off the fan completely because that was just circulating the AC in our room. We did that and bundled up for two nights.

During one of the nights, there was a rainstorm and we realized that our room was badly leaking from the window/above the window. We called the front desk and were told that maintence wasn't there, but that she'd have them take a look in the morning. In the meantime, she'd bring up old towels for us to mop up (took over an hour to get the old towels). We also had to use our ice bucket to catch the falling water. Fine. Maintence was never called or sent to our room. The bucket and the towels stayed put in the window. Not fine.

Then the heat kicked on and the rooms were registering at about 85-90 degrees. Their advice was to turn the fan off and open the windows--even when nights were 40 degrees out, it was still too hot with the windows open. This was the rest of our stay. They lied and said they had someone coming to fix it, but clearly, from the reviews, this is just their system and it's unacceptable. At almost $300/night, you'd think this wouldn't happen. There were LINES of angry guests for a few nights complaining about the heat. That's all that was talked about at breakfast in the morning. The breakfast area was a sauna. It was miserable.

We requested daily housekeeping and no one said they were unable to do it--but our room was never cleaned and our supplies (towels, coffees, face wipes, etc.) were never replenished (unless we begged mulitple times). We ran out of towels pretty quickly. On the 3rd or 4th morning, we requested a basic refresh and the front desk staff wrote it down and then we took off for the night. When we returned the next day, nothing had been done. There were still piles of dirty towels and garbage that needed to be taken care of. We went back down to the front desk and the staff there was able to get housekeeping to clean our room--but we had to wait in the lobby for another 1.5-2 hours to get that done--it was already about 4:00 pm. Website says daily, IHG says every 3 days--neither of these things happened. After 7 days, I requested another clean--but I had to beg. For all of this, they gave us a full $100 off (and a free bag of popcorn) our 9 day stay. Generous. There's an issue with management or ownership (or both) and it needs to be corrected. IHG should pull...

We visited on a Wednesday in late June 2025. Parking was terrible. Half the parking lot was being repaved or repainted and closed off. It was very hard to find a parking spot. There was a parking garage underneath the hotel but we had our cargo carrier on our van and did not fit. All the surface spots were taken we were lucky to find 1 on the side near the back of the hotel. In the morning there were cars parked in the middle of the road just because there were not enough spots. The parking situation was hopefully temporary while it was being redone. There were a number of people outside just hanging out and fixing their cars across the street I'm assuming who were staying at the White River Inn & Suites.

When we checked in, we were given a goodie bag with water bottle and pretzels which was nice.

We were in room 264, a 2 queen bed, 1 bedroom suite. The room was large and had lots of space. To our surprise there was a dishwasher as well. Also a couple dishes and cups in the cabinets. No utensils however.

The worse part was the AC unit. The room was at 74F when we arrived and it was in the 90s outside. We immediately set it to 68F which is what we set all our hotel rooms too when we arrive. By bed time the temp int he room had actually gone UP to 75F and we set the thermostat to 66F. When we woke up in the morning the temp int he room was only at 71F. The worse thing was not the heat but more the humidity in the room. We would've been better off opening the windows in the room over night (weird but they looked like they could be opened). The outside temp overnight was in the upper 60s.

The room also had very few lights. Not the worse I've seen at Holiday Inn Express but it was definitely towards the bottom. The blinds int he main room also did not work so it was permanently darker in there.

The water pressure int he bathroom was too HIGH. I've never had the problem before but on the typical showerhead setting the tiny streams of water were actually tickling me and I had to change the stream type. The high water pressure my wife enjoyed though for washing her hair.

On the positive having luggage bench in both rooms was nice. Also there were plenty of outlets everywhere. There was also lots of storage space with closets and a nice table to sit and eat at. The room was also fairly clean.

There was a market downstairs they called "Sundry Shop" which had drinks and snacks in it. They also had nice ice cold waters with lemon, orange and cucumber options. The breakfast lounge area was also quite large. The breakfast selection was also nice with potatoes and individually wrapped muffins. I liked the small bottled milks instead of the cartons or large jugs.

I do not believe there was a pool and the gym was small but nice. There was usually a person in it the entire time we visited.

One of the most infuriating things we encountered was the guest laundry. On our floor there is a sign points down the hall for laundry. We follow it all the way to the end. At the end there is another sign saying Guest Laundry open 24 hours. But there is nothing. There is an ice machine, a locked door with no windows and a stair well on the opposite side... We were 12 days into our 17 day road trip and were hoping to do some laundry but I guess that wasn't happening here.

Overall our stay was fine. Nothing to write home about. The lack of a functional AC unit in our room and the missing laundry just put us over the edge. We'd probably find another hotel next time we were traveling...

We stayed here because we have in the past, and it was right on the route along our business trip. Also I had an Anniversary Night to use, so we did. In hindsight, what a mistake - I am so disappointed! This room seemed old and tired and in need of a redo.

The room and bathroom appeared to be very clean; linens were fresh and clean. Front desk staff surprised me - seemingly little or no interest in doing more than the minimum, which is NOT our usual experience!! They answered questions but volunteered nothing except the minimum - NO recognition of an IHG member; NO information about whether there is a grab-n-go breakfast (we would not have used it anyway), or even complimentary coffee. I stated I was using my Anniversary night, to make sure that was the case. When I checked out, the young gentleman at the desk did ask how our stay was. I didn't want to burden him with complaints as we had to move along to get to our event.

The bathroom fan was noisy but we shut the door to sleep. The room temperature control was easy and worked perfectly. HOWEVER, the absolute WORST was our beds - my husband said the next day his had felt like there was a hole in the middle! Mine was not much better. The mattresses in our room were definitely old and tired - WAY short of the super comfort/support we have come to expect and WHY we stay at IHG in the first place!! Our very top priority, the reason we choose IHG, is we "always" find bedding more comfortable than other places, even wishing I could take it home. Had I could have realized about these beds, I would have booked the competitor hotel for us instead, because we needed good, supportive, comfortable bedding to get through the all-day mostly on our feet business event we were attending the next day.

Also truly annoying - there was no TV guide and the cable they are using has NO program guide - every channel says "NO INFO" - so not only did we have to channel surf, we had to try to avoid commercials to even figure out what program was on. We got a channel list from the front desk (had to ask for it) but it only was a list of channels. Our last HIE stay cable service had a program guide built in - our best TV experience with IHG!

I do not know if there was any "grab and go" breakfast option. Staff never said anything about it, but that did not matter as we already had decided to just go elsewhere...