Holiday Inn Express & Suites Milwaukee Airport by IHG — Hotel in Milwaukee

Dear Clint,

I am writing to file a formal complaint about my stay at the Holiday Inn Express located at 1400 W Zellman on September 27, 2025. The stay was extremely disappointing due to a number of serious issues, and I am requesting a full refund.

Upon arrival, I was first assigned a room that was visibly dirty. I ended up having to move rooms three times, and all of the rooms were located on the third floor while the elevator was out of service. I was never informed in advance that the elevator was down, which forced me to carry all of my luggage and belongings upstairs.

Throughout the week before my arrival, I had been texting with a previous coworker, Jalen, only to be told upon arrival that he had quit that day. I also asked if the elevator would be operational by checkout and was told it wouldn’t be for at least a month because the hotel was “behind on bills.” This kind of disclosure is completely unacceptable.

Due to the poor experience, I asked to use the conference room at no charge as a courtesy. I was told the request was passed to yourself (clint), who denied it and quoted a fee of $150 — despite the multiple issues I was dealing with.

I was also told by a housekeeping supervisor about a strict “no party” rule, which was never communicated in any of my calls with Jennifer prior to my arrival and is not listed anywhere online. This caused confusion and disrupted my plans. This was mentioned while I had a cake in my hands complaining that the room I was checked into was dirty. I feel like because I pointed out an issue, she tried spinning it on me as if I did something wrong. I wasn’t having a party-I reserved 3 rooms for this exact reason. She stated there was a max of 6 people per room, but in a standard double the max amount of guests is 4 people, which that’s exactly it. I had 4 guests in 2 rooms and 3 in another. I am a IHG employee I wouldn’t risk my job nor my discount for any negligence. But telling me the policy was in place because someone had 15 guests in one room is wild to me. Which again was unnecessary information since I reserved the correct amount of rooms per my guest count. Later that evening, a man was loitering near the front entrance and staring at my 7-year-old daughter in a disturbing way. He later met up with a woman arriving by Uber who appeared to be engaging in prostitution. This made me feel incredibly unsafe.

When I checked into my third room, I walked in to find the PTAC unit torn apart with a maintenance cart still in the room. I called the front desk and was told someone was changing the filter, but the unit was clearly not working at all during my stay.

I previously reached out to IHG Guest Relations and was told someone from the hotel would be contacting me. I have yet to receive any response, which is why I am now following up directly via email.

The only positive aspect of my stay was that the pool was open and very clean, and I want to acknowledge the houseman who was present during both my check-in and check-out. He was constantly cleaning, working hard, and maintaining the property — I did compliment him in person and want to formally recognize his efforts.

Given the number and seriousness of the issues I experienced — from poor room conditions and broken amenities to safety concerns — I believe a full refund is entirely appropriate and expected.

Please respond to confirm when this refund...

I will start with what I did like. Our room was very spacious. Lobby was clean and nice.

Here's what I didn't like. Our room was able to accommodate up to 6 people (2 queens & sofa bed)

However, there were only enough towels for 4. So I called down to front desk for more towels and for a clean comforter/sheets since the one on the bed had some mysterious red smears on it (gross!) , to which the lady answered she can gather them, but we had to go down to front desk to retrieve them since no one else was working. Next, after walking on the carpet for a while, we all had black grime on our feet- clearly the carpets need cleaning! Also, the deadbolt on our door did not lock. Not safe!

The following morning at breakfast (Sunday, Aug 18) the food attendant lady was super rude and had a major attitude when I asked if they had more creamer because it had ran out. When she brought it out, I thanked her but she completely ignored me. Also, a fellow guest dropped a serving utensil onto the ground, which the same attendant clearly saw/watched. It wasn't until I asked if she had another utensil that she could get so i could serve myself- her reply was: yeah but you can just use that one over there and pointed to another serving dish. She certainly was very unfriendly and not welcoming at all.

When we returned to our room around 3:30 on Sunday afternoon, we saw housekeeping had not come. I called down to front desk to tell them we need service but the lady said that the cleaners all left for the day. A half hour later the head housekeeper showed up, and gave us some towels, she didn't take the trash, make up the beds or anything else. she also made the excuse that we didn't get service because Sundays were very busy....last time I checked I was paying for this hotel stay and expected to get the services they say are provided.

The following day was Monday Aug 19, which at check in we learned that they were shutting down power at 10 am (an hour before check out limit) on 8/19/19 to make some repairs. I was not made aware of this planned power outage when I booked my stay. The lady at check in said it was only the power to the public areas that will be shut off, and we would still have power to our room and can still use pool. NOT TRUE! It wasn't until 8:30am that morning that a maintenance worker said that the ENTIRE building will be without power at 10am. So I I was forced to QUICKLY pack up our whole room, get my kids feed breakfast and dressed and make sure we were off the 3rd floor (where our room was) before they cut the power so we didn't get stuck in the elevator. Also, I had originally planned to leave our room at check out time at 11, not 10. I would not stay here again or recommend this place. Too many Cons...

We read a ton of reviews on a number of hotels and while this one had its fair share of complaints, we thought most of them seemed like complaints about the crowded pool and noise associated. So we booked it. Please listen to me when I say... don't do it. The room itself looks like it's been updated, but there are SO many little things that make it an unpleasant stay. The occupants prior to us had clearly had a party of some sort, and we got to live in their mess. There was confetti all over the place, broken forks all under the couch when we pulled out the couch bed, and gobs of tape stuck to the walls, desk, and shelves. We found Nerds (candy) all over the floor, furniture, and in the bed. There were stains of green frosting and wine on all sides of each of the couch cushions, and tons of frosting smeared into the carpet. Our feet literally stuck to the floor as we walked through the room, so it turned into a massive game of The Floor Is Lava where we were all avoiding putting our feet on the carpet without shoes on. The floor throughout the entire first floor was sticky and you could clearly see stains, spills, and drips that were not fresh. The coffee table in our room was broken, and the door to the room was hanging off the top hinge, so that it was extremely difficult to open and had to be forced (hard) to shut. The worst part was sitting on the bed playing cards with my husband when something jabbed me in the foot, and we found a small piece of broken glass in the comforter. Thankfully, I hadn't yet lay down in the spot or it would have hurt much worse elsewhere on my body. Breakfast was good. We swam in the morning before checkout and the pool was decent, though we were the only ones there and I could absolutely see how it probably gets very loud and chaotic in there very quickly. The birthday party that took place in our room clearly also was at the pool at some point as there were large globs of green frosting on the tables and all over the floor in the pool area. We stayed on a Monday night, and it was not busy at all, so it's not like there had been no time to try to catch up on the cleaning and/or no other room to put us in while they cleaned more thoroughly. Regardless, we will absolutely not...