InterContinental Houston by IHG — Hotel in Houston

We booked a King Classic, away from the elevator, with down pillows. We expected to receive this. Instead, we got a Queen type room with a shower curtain right next to the elevator. We phoned reception, the polite man who checked us in (Ethan), recognised that we had been placed in a room that didn’t match our booking as he could see on the computer. He asked us to come back down and he’d place us in the correct room type. Unfortunately, during this process, he had to ask for help from his rude colleague to identify a room, Jonah. Jonah said we’d have to just take what we got, as we ‘hadn’t booked the right thing’ despite our booking clearly saying King Classic. Ethan pointed out we had booked the King room, but Jonah said it didn’t matter because other people arriving the next day would be needing those King Classic rooms.

While I was on the phone to my client explaining we were not able to book into our hotel, my husband asked to speak to the manager. This was refused, which seems incredible to me, but Ethan and Jonah did go back to speak to him themselves, the man who Jonah said wouldn’t do anything, but actually was able to resolve the issue and placed us in the correct room. Jonah was clearly upset that the manager had resolved the issue and corrected our room, and said that he “didn’t know how he magicked up that change or where he pulled that solution.” We were quite shocked at how emotionally he was dealing with being overruled, as he was so enraged he physically couldn’t calm down enough to put the keycards in their holder. No further efforts were made to ensure the room was set up appropriately e.g. the pillows corrected, which I feel is matter of course when a room change is done. It was embarrassing to have this frothing man angry at us for an error that wasn’t ours: I do not expect to be treated that way anywhere, let alone somewhere I’m paying to stay.

There was no respite when we were in the room either: the kettle didn’t work, there was shouting in the hallway at 10:20pm, a dog in a nearby room barked continuously. We phoned down, they said they’d send a new kettle, pillows, blanket and some towels (our room just had one!) but no one came. After an hour, my husband phoned again, and finally we received a blanket and towels - nothing else.

I spoke to reception on the morning of the 6th Nov regarding the noise and was told: “we will take a note, and the front desk manager will reach out to you.” I asked what would be done about our total lack of sleep due to the dog, and they said they had “noted down to get security to check the dog wasn’t unattended.” This is appalling service: I expect a manager to come out and discuss how to make this right. They did not, and we never heard from the Front Desk Manager, only to return that evening, and to hear the dog barking again.

We phoned down, and were told security would go again. But why did this not get resolved when I’d gone down to the front desk? Why are we dealing with this again? It took over an hour for security to show up and walk the halls a bit, and I can only assume the guest was not receptive because the dog began barking again at 3am. The owner responded by shouting at the dog. How wonderful, to know that the Intercontinental would rather have a yipping dog be satisfied with its stay than us. The barking began again at 5:30am.

It’s now 6:30am as I sit in my room, angry at the lack of sleep I’ve had for two nights and frustrated at the entirely lacking customer service at this excuse for a hotel. This is by far the worst stay I have ever had. I feel like I spent $200 a night on a hostel, rather than the four-star hotel you advertise yourself as. I am astonished that staff refuse to let upset customers speak to a manager, while clearly having a lack of solutions themselves. In ten years, I have never had cause to make a single complaint at any Intercontinental. This one visit has been so farcically bad that I will never, ever return. I was due to stay at another branch next weekend: that will be cancelled, and I’ll be...

Where to start with this hotel...from the outside it seems pretty great. The valet service that greets you is incredibly helpful and friendly, truly a highlight of my stay. If I were to give a rating purely base on the valet and shuttle interactions I had, this hotel would earn 5 stars easily.

However, the rest of my experience was a mixed bag at best. Let's start with the good parts, though.

Lobby - The bar staff was nice, and the lobby has plenty of comfortable furniture to lounge on. They also stocked complimentary hot chocolate on a near-daily basis, which was quite delicious. However, it was very strange that on the day after Thanksgiving, they had already put up Christmas decorations, even though that holiday was still a month away. It made the overall atmosphere a bit off-putting, to say the least.

Housekeeping - This was probably the biggest disappointment of my entire stay. While the housekeeping staff did successfully take care of most of the basics when cleaning the room, there were a few peculiar and consistent misses that I noticed repeatedly. For some reason, every day the housekeeping staff would touch, pick up, and move all of my toiletries on the bathroom counter, but for no discernible reason. You would think they were doing so in order to clean the counter, but the space they cleared on the counter was never cleaned. Each time they would leave behind dried rings of toothpaste water which came up easily with a wet washcloth, evidence that they hadn't even wiped down the counter. So why were they touching and moving all of my belongings? Additionally, some days they would fail to replace some of the toiletry supplies, such as the cotton swabs. Worst of all, however, they kept taking all of my dirty washcloths without replacing them with clean ones! During my entire ten night stay, I only got a clean supply of washcloths once, despite housekeeping cleaning my room every single day. They didn't even leave me the dirty ones to reuse; they apparently felt it was fine that the room would just have fewer or no washcloths altogether.

Front Desk - The front desk staff was a mixed bag as well. When I tried to call them about the lack of washcloths when I discovered it at 10:30 pm as I was trying to take a shower and go to bed, they promised to send up clean ones for me immediately. After waiting in my room for an hour, nobody showed. So, I called the front desk again, and they acted like they didn't even know I had an outstanding request! I finally got my clean washcloths on the second try and was able to take my shower after midnight, far later than I'd planned. To make matters worse, they clearly didn't address the issue with housekeeping. I carefully laid out my stack of clean washcloths on the counter that night, and the next morning the housekeepers took all of them and left me with no washcloths AGAIN! Thus continued the issue for many more days without correction, despite my having raised the issue with the front desk multiple times. I had another issue dealing with the front desk when I needed to extend my reservation by a few days. This happened twice, and on both occasions the staff neglected to give me any information about the costs of extending my stay. They happily took my credit card and charged me for an additional 8 days, but they didn't bother to give me any information on the costs until I received the bill in an email after I'd already checked out. The one good thing I can say about the front desk staff is that when a family member in another room received a package, they were nice enough to tell me when we spoke so that I could let my relative know it was waiting for them.

Overall, this hotel positions itself as a four-star property, but it only delivers a two-and-a-half star experience instead. The service is wildly inconsistent, and even attempts to report issues went uncorrected. That makes the value of a stay here an incredibly poor proposition, and I'm going to think long and hard before I make that...

Short story: We were repeatedly overcharged over the course of 10 nights across 2 stays and they refused to refund some of the charges despite a variety of promises, lies and iPad problems.

Long Story: We stayed twice at the intercontinental during the month of October.

During the first stay (3 nights), upon check-in, the premium room that I had reserved was unavailable with the “guaranteed” king bed. Therefore, I accepted a downgraded room so that we could have a king bed (~$50 less/night). After checkout and upon receiving my emailed receipt, I discovered that I was still charged the premium rate for the original room. After a 20 minute phone call, the Intercontinental agreed that I was charged a higher rate than was intended and would send me a new receipt. The new receipt had the exact same charges and I decided to give up as it wasn’t worth another 20 minute phone call with likely similar results.

During the second stay (7 nights), I prepaid self parking. Upon arrival the first night, my wife and sister valeted the car unaware that I had paid for self parking. So I expected the $47 charge, no problem. The next morning, my sister collected the car from valet and did not return to the hotel. We informed the front desk staff that evening that she had collected the car and would not return for valet again. We wanted to make sure that we were not charged for any additional days of valet, just the first night. The front desk staff repeatedly informed us that there was no problem and we would not be charged beyond the first night.

To our dismay, upon checkout, we discovered 6 nights of valet charges for a total of $300. After prolonged discussion, the hotel only agreed to refund 4 of the nights. They refused to refund the second night first stating that the car was collected two days later. When this lie was refuted/confronted by my wife, they then stated that their iPad was down when we requested no more valet services and that we would still have to pay the additional night of valet because of their error. We were of course livid, however, they would not budge and the updated receipt indeed shows two nights of valet.

The repeated overcharging by this hotel is ridiculous and suspect. Furthermore the refusal to rectify their own mistakes is downright criminal. I would strongly advise avoiding this hotel. Its convenient location to the TMC was its major perk, however this alone is not enough to return as many other excellent options are present nearby. Please see below for a subject scoring of the hotel otherwise:

Service: 1/5 Room: 3.5/5 Amenities: 3/5 Bar/Restaurant:...