Holiday Inn Chicago O'Hare Area by IHG — Hotel in Jefferson Township

I am absolutely appalled by the customer service at this hotel and with the IHG corporation. I stayed at this hotel on Oct. 7 with some family members. I had paid upfront through a 3rd party (Booking.com). $408 was taken from my account prior to our stay. When I checked in, I advised that I had a reservation for 2 rooms for 1 night. The girl at the front desk told me that while the room was paid for, I still needed to give my card for incidentals and the money would be reimbursed. I used 2 debit cards, 1 for each room. Each debit card was charged $256. Stupidly, I noticed this but did not say anything because I figured that was standard and the pending charge would drop off the next when I checked out. The next day when I checked out, I mentioned that the amount was pending on my account and they told me that it would in fact drop off since I had already paid through Booking.com and my card was only being held for incidentals. |I watched my account over the next few days and I was in fact charged $204.06 and $254.06 on one card and $221.81 on the other card. In addition, I paid $17.75 for parking and still had the $408.12 charge from Booking.com. I called and spoke with someone at the front desk. She had me leave a message on a manager's voicemail. No return call. I called back the next day and was able to speak to a "manager". He apologized and said he would take care of the charges and also credit my account through Booking so I would only have to pay for 1 room plus he would take off the parking charge. The only amount that was dropped was $254.06 from one of my cards. I still had the $204.06, 221.81, and $17.75 charges. I waited over a week and finally called back and asked to speak to a manager. Once again, I was put through to the voicemail of the director of operations and left a message. No return call. I called back multiple times, left messages, and spoke to the front desk with absolutely no help. I left a message on a Guest Relations voicemail at the corporate office in Georgia. No return call. I called the hotel I stayed at last week and finally spoke with a man named Tate. He found my reservation and told me that he would have to talk to his manager and he promised he would call me back that day. This did not happen. I ended up finding a chatbot online and was able to finally speak to someone on the phone from the Phillippines on Friday, Oct. 27. She took my information, gave me a reference number, and I was called back within 10 minutes from guest relations somewhere in the US. She told me that she credited the account and it was taken care of. When I asked her how much she credited my account she said $221.81. I told her that was great, but I had another card that needed to be credited as well. She said she knew nothing about that and she was only going to credit the one account. I went round and round with her explaining what had happened and she was finally able to find the other room we stayed in just by looking up the room number. Apparently, the reservation had been modified and I had 2 reservations (which I actually did not...I only had 2 rooms for 1 night under 1 reservation). She put me on hold for a very long time and finally came back and told me that she credited that account for $186.21. I asked her why that amount was when the amount that should have been credited was $204.06. She said it was because I still had to pay for parking. I explained that I already paid $17.75 for parking when I checked out and I had the charge on my account. She told me that I still had to pay for parking so she would not give me my full refund. Eventually, she put me on hold and finally came back to tell me that she gave me back the parking and I would now be credited $202.41. I again asked her why it was not the full amount that was given back and she said it was for fees such as gas and electricity that was not part of the hotel and that it was only $2 less than what I actually paid and I should not worry about $2. |So, I ended up fighting with this hotel for 3 weeks and still did not get my entire refund...yes $2 is nothing, but it is the idea behind it. The whole thing is wrong. I will never stay at another Holiday Inn or IHG hotel again. Do better,...

On 12/19/24 our flight was canceled after we had been standing on the runway for hours. It had been snowing and it was very cold. We rebooked our flight for 8am the next morning. It was almost midnight and we live more than an hour away, so we decided to stay at a nearby hotel with a shuttle. I have an IHG membership, and we decided to stay at the Holiday Inn O’Hare at Rosemont. We waited outside in the snow and cold for the shuttle to come. The first Holiday Inn shuttle to show up listed Holiday Inn on Cumberland Ave. I asked the driver if he went to the Holiday Inn at Rosemont and he said that he did. I asked him twice before we got on, and he said yes both times. Besides my husband and myself, there were 3 other travelers. ||When we got to the Holiday Inn, an older man started yelling at our driver, telling him he should have been there a long time ago. He made a huge scene, yelling at him in front of all of us in the lobby. My husband intervened and told the older man that he needs to take the argument outside, and that it was inappropriate behavior in front of guests. The older man (identified himself as ‘Marvin’) started yelling at my husband, shouting at him to “shut the ** up, get your keys and go to your room”. Marvin eventually walked out. ||The people in front of us, also from our shuttle, then found out they were at the wrong hotel. Soon, we all realized that we were all at the wrong hotel. We were at the Holiday Inn on Cumberland… Everyone on the shuttle was at the wrong hotel, in spite of us asking the shuttle driver twice if it was the right shuttle. It’s not that we got off at the wrong stop - that shuttle doesn’t go to our hotel, which is on the opposite direction from the airport. The younger driver said he would take us to our hotel, at which point the reception clerk said that he couldn’t do that because he was supposed to take a flight crew to the airport. Then Marvin came back, heard what was going on, and resumed yelling at the driver (I didn’t get his name, but I have his picture, young guy). The driver didn’t say much after that point, other than to flirt with a flight attendant who came down, telling her she looked pretty… The driver just looked at us and smirked while we fumed at him. ||At first the suggestion was that we take the shuttle back to O’Hare and get the right shuttle from there. Marvin suggested that we wait for the shuttle to drop off the flight crew and then they’d take us to Rosemont. In the end, we ordered an Uber to get to Rosemont so we could get a few hours sleep before we had to go back to the airport again. ||All in all we had a horrible experience that night. We were grateful to show up finally at the Holiday Inn in Rosemont, where we were greeted by a wonderful night manager named Kahan. Kahan took good care of us on arrival and made sure we got to our morning shuttle to...

The entire stay was great. We chose this particular hotel because it is close to an L’ train station, which is how we got to downtown Chicago to tour the museums.

The hotel was very clean and well maintained. The attached restaurant was very convenient and the food was excellent. We ate breakfast there both days of our stay and had dinner there one night. Both the breakfasts and the dinner were excellent. Better than I had expected to be honest.

We did encounter an issue, however, we went asked to have the dinner bill charged to our room. We wanted to do this because I have food vouchers which I earned through Milestone Rewards. For those that don’t know what this is — once you stay at IHG properties 20 nights in a given year you can earn milestone rewards which can be redeemed for $20 food vouchers that can be redeemed at the IHG properties that have restaurants. I travel frequently for work, so we had 2 vouchers that we wanted to use for this meal before they expired.

Unfortunately there was some confusion because both the restaurant and the hotel said that this was not possible at their location because the restaurant was a separate entity from the hotel. I was disappointed, but I have to give credit that they were nice about it and genuinely seemed apologetic. When we checked out my wife spoke to someone who took my information and said she would give it to the manager when he was in the next day.

The manager DID call me and he completely rectified the situation to my satisfaction. It turns out that the hotel DOES accept these vouchers, but there was a misunderstanding on the hotel staff and restaurant staff’s part it would seem.

To be fair, this program is fairly new and I would imagine that they probably don’t see a lot of these vouchers, so the confusion is understandable.

I don’t get angry when something goes wrong, because inevitably mistakes are made and things aren’t always perfect. What I base my opinion and review on are how they respond to the problem.

As stated — the manager called me the very next day and was very apologetic and completely resolved the situation to my satisfaction. He could not have handled the situation any better than he did and I will most definitely stay at this hotel again next time we are in the Chicago area!

Overall, besides the one minor hiccup, the whole stay was...