Aspen Grand Hotel Houston — Hotel in Houston

Disappointed…

I understand some situations are beyond control however the response to certain situations have to be addressed properly and appropriately.  Myself, my mother and my aunt (both are 65+) checked in and proceeded to leave our luggage and belongings in the room and left to visit the family we were in town to see.  When we arrived back we were locked out of our room by the “U-type” door latch. Apparently the door latch was loose and when the door slammed shut it was jostled in a position that locked the door from the inside. I informed the desk clerk of what I felt happened, she went over the standard questions, “Is someone from your party inside?”, I said, “No”, She called the room and of course no one answered. She called the hotel maintenance man whos phone had a message informing her the phone was not accepting phone calls (apparently the maintenance man’s hours are 9 am-5 pm with NO concessions for emergencies) , she called to find an alternate phone number and handed me a ‘tool’ (a long black plastic sink clog remover) that I could perhaps try to jostle the door latch myself from the outside. That did not work. The desk clerk came up with a hack she was told by the hotel owner that should work, it did not work. Attempts to get into the room failed, the maintenance man was MIA so the desk clerk began to talk about providing us a room for the night. I was grateful they had an alternate room since this was Thanksgiving eve, but my mother and my aunt informed me they needed their medications for their diabetes, hypertension and thyroid respectively. I would’ve been annoyed, but okay with this solution if it were just me, but I had my family members that needed access to their belongings (which include necessary medications).  I went through the motions with this whole episode however their was no resolution other than providing another room to stay in without our belongings for the night. I acquiesced since we had no other choice. For  our inconvenience I inquired about obtaining a night free. The desk clerk called the general manager and informed her the best he could do was 25% off the bill. I accepted and we were put into a room across the hall. The new rooms TV didn’t work and the refrigerator had an iced over bottom pan. I reported this to the front desk. We were moved to yet another room. The next morning starting at 9am(the time the maintenance man was to arrive) I periodically opened the door to look down the hallway in the direction toward the room where our luggage was kept. The maintenance man came at 9:30 am and by 10 am the front desk called to say the room was open, but I had to go back down stairs to get another key to re-open the room since the first set had been confiscated.

This is the hotel where I always stay when I’m in Houston because of it’s proximity to my family members home. During one of my previous stays I became an IHG Rewards Club member. This lead me to stay at Holiday Inn during my summer trip to Washington DC and I’ve stayed multiple times that this Houston location. This Thanksgiving my uncle and his wife from Georgia stayed at this hotel also at my recommendation.

Upon check out I asked for a printed copy of my bill to confirm if the promised 25% was taken off the bill. From the $263.53 only $23.60 was deducted with the note “customer had issues with room". This is NOT 25%. If $23.60 was deducted for each issue with the room then there should have been multiple deductions for each individual issue. #1:the door latch, #2:the inconvenience of not having access to required/essential medications, #3:the non-functioning TV and iced over refrigerator in the second room, #4:being moved to a third room, #5: not being transparent about the 25% being taken off the total.

This entire experience was avoidable, frustrating, handled...

So much to say here that went wrong with this stay. This is a long post, but I think its very important to read through it before you decide to stay at the location. I have included a TL;DR at the end, though, just in case.

So we went in for a wedding over Thanksgiving weekend. The entire hotel was rented out by the wedding party. Major issues with the hotel/stay:

We went in on Friday and checked in for all our rooms. We were given most of our room keys immediately, but there was a problem. When people were going up to their rooms, they found that most rooms were still occupied with hotel occupants not having checked out (Some of which were rooms in which the tenants were out of the hotel and they had their bags and stuff just laying around).

The next morning, there was no hot water in the entire building for anyone to shower in. Furthermore, there was no breakfast at all. Have you ever heard of a Holiday Inn Express not serving breakfast?

Even with the room fiasco and water issue, everything seemed ok until that evening. While the entire party was at the wedding reception (the hotel was empty), someone got hold of a master key and broke into every room in the building. We had laptops, tablets, jewelry, etc stolen. The sad part is that if you look back into a previous review from about 5 months ago, someone else had a very similar situation in which they were robbed at this hotel as well. The only reasonable explanation we could come up with (as the user who had left the review 5 months ago had thought as well) was that this was an inside job (they even used the excuse of the cameras being down and him needing to talk to his IT guy on Monday). The owner from the night of the incident until now has been completely uncooperative. Fortunately, a few of the lost items have been found through the help of Houston PD but the vast a majority is still unaccounted for and unlikely to be found. At the end of the day, it is just material possessions; however, in posting this, I wanted to make sure that others do understand the dangers of staying at this property. Its like that old mantra "fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." They already fooled at least two groups of people. Don't be the third.

TL;DR: Hotel was rented out for a bunch of people going to a wedding. People given rooms with other tenants still sleeping in them/occupied. No hot water during the stay. Many rooms were robbed with jewelry, electronics, etc stolen. Owner not being cooperative. Same situation happened at this exact location...

I rarely leave a negative review, but i could not let this one go. Looking back, we should have read the recent reviews. We are currently staying at this hotel and will not be returning after this stay. We stayed here a few years ago, and don't recall issues. The man at the front was ridiculous for interrogating me over towels! My husband showered upon arrival today, and even though the curtain was closed, somehow there is a large amount of water on the restroom floor. Naturally, he grabbed the towels to try to soak up the water. I called down to request more towels and was told I would need to go get them. Ok, no problem even though in hindsight he could have said it a little differently. I go downstairs and request the towels. I was asked how many and when I asked for 4 or 5, he quickly turned around and said 4 or 5 towels? How many people are in your room. I said I was the one who just called about the water on the floor. He said oh ok, I'll give you dirty towels. GROSS! I said no we need clean towels because we used the ones in the room to soak up the water. He then said ok I'll give you 2 clean towels and the rest dirty. I once again, said no I do not want dirty towels. Why are you going to give me dirty towels? I don't want to hold dirty towels, please give me clean towels. And oh my goodness, he then says you want clean towels to clean the floor. I said you know what forget it, keep the towels, I will just leave the floor like that. He then said do you still want you vlean towels? I told him no thank you and the way you handled this entire situation was inappropriate and could have been handled differently. Absolutely ridiculous! Over towels!? It's silly to be upset over something so minor, but his approach and questioning was unnecessary. We will not return to this hotel and prefer to take our money and business somewhere else.

This place obviously needs some upkeep. We definitely don't expect everything to be state of the art, but this place is far from decent. They have full size toiletries that did not work in our room. The ice machine on the third floor doesn't work amd neither does the vending machine. This hotel is not very clean so we will not be eating breakfast here.

Hopefully your experience here is a great one, but this drew the line for us. I recommend you search for other options in the area. I'm sure there is something way better! I will be contacting corporate, but who knows what good that will do as it's apparent this place is...