InterContinental New Orleans by IHG — Hotel in New Orleans

I will first opine that the hotel amenities and performance have declined since my last stay here in 2014. ||||The pipes loudly hammered away each time someone in the hotel engaged a shower, even waking me one night to what I thought was the sound of thunder. Plumbing issues even impacted one of our group’s rooms so there was no water – of any temperature – one morning . This is inexcusable in a budget hotel, much less an alleged 4-star hotel.||||The final negative was the 3 am experience on the morning of March 6th. Mother and I shared a room. Mother arranged for an extra night for March 5th so we could enjoy the city one more day. She traveled with a printed confirmation from the hotel. I confirmed the extra night with the front desk at our arrival on February 28 and again on March 2nd and March 5th. I sought the latter confirmation because housekeeping showed up to clean the room, confused that we hadn’t checked out.||||At 3 am on March 6th, we awakened to loud, repeated pounding on our room door. When I asked who was outside, without opening the door, I was told “police.” I immediately thought there was a fire in the building and we hadn’t heard the alarm so cracked the door. The man outside repeated he was “police” and told me “You aren’t supposed to be here!, You have to leave!” I told him we had paid for an extra night and he responded that we had to “get dressed and talk to the girl downstairs.” He produced no identification and was wearing clothing that appeared to have the NOLA police crescent insignia.||||Mother and I got dressed and, although she didn’t want to leave the room, fearing we would be locked out, she gathered her printed confirmation to present to “the girl” downstairs and we headed for the elevator.||||When the elevator door opened, the same man who told us he was police, was there to tell us that we didn’t have to come downstairs. Mother and I insisted we talk to the person who called the police to roust two old ladies from the room– however mistaken she was.||||Once in front of “the girl”, Jamie, Mother attempted to present her printed confirmation and Jamie refused to even look at it, saying that her housekeeping records showed we were to have vacated the room on March 5th. She never apologized and vehemently denied calling the police saying that the man was the hotel’s security person. Mr. Police also denied identifying himself as police.||||By this time, Mother– 94 years old – was shaking like a leaf with the adrenalin and lack of sleep to the point that I was concerned she was about to have a stroke. I kept asking her to please calm down, that I was afraid she would have a stroke. As an aside, when Mother took her BP at the return to the room 40 minutes later, it read 197/120. I thank God that this egregious screw-up by an insensitive and unskilled hotel employee didn’t result in a medical emergency!||||Unrepentant and uncaring, Jamie would only offer Mother the first name of the manager, Justin, who would be on duty at 7 am. Apologizing repeatedly, Justin told both of us he would add points to each of our IHG accounts and he would have the General Manager call Mother. Of course, no one called and no points appeared in either of our accounts.||||To make a long story shorter, with much diligence, Mother has since been able to contact someone, at least at the sub-director level, within IHG to receive a piddly compensation – and profuse apologies – for this event.||||Although I have talked to Guest Relations several times since 3/6, no points have been added to my account. I made a final call to Guest Relations on 4/15 after another promise on 3/28 to have the points added to my account and someone from the hotel call me. ||||I have shared this horrible experience with many of my friends, several review sites and with the organization who booked 50+ rooms with this hotel for the last week of Carnival. I'm not holding my breath I will ever receive a call or the promised points and I will never stay at this hotel...

Dangerously maintained and poorly run.

Booked to stay in the InterContinental New Orleans via British Airways Holidays as it came as a recommended hotel. I later discovered why this hotel comes recommended, as the British Airways crew are hosted at this hotel too. Location was fantastic, just the other side of Canal St from the French Quarter, meaning you're close to all the touristy bits, but not right in the middle of it all.

Things started going wrong after our first night. Waking up to take a shower, we discovered the tap in our shower was jammed and would not move, meaning we could not use the shower or bathtub. We tried to call down to reception but the phone just kept ringing and ringing with no answer. Eventually, after trying to call from the public phone by the lift lobby of our floor, we were able to contact reception and they said they'd send a member of staff "right away"... 30 minutes passed with no sign of the promised engineer. Would have thought a guest who could not use their bathroom would be a priority to them. In the end, I had to fix the tap myself. I was not prepared to wait in my room all day in order to take a shower. It's not like I came to New Orleans to sit in my hotel room the whole time! Upon further inspection, it appeared that the previous guest had overtightened the tap as the shower leaked a lot, making a lot of noise as the water hit the bottom of the tub.

Also on the subject of maintenance, see the below picture. Power sockets in a dangerous state of disrepair. Lucky we didn't have children staying in our room. I brought this to the front desk's attention too. Let's hope they've fixed it by now.

Soundproofing in the rooms is very poor. You can hear the St Charles streetcar going past the hotel all through the night, not to mention the conversations of neighboring rooms. In fact, one of our party had to complain to the front desk due to her neighbours shouting through the night, keeping her awake.

During our stay, we went to visit with some friends late one night who were staying in another hotel. Upon returning to the InterContinental, we scanned our room key at the lift, but the lift did not recognise the card and the lift would not operate. I went to the front desk, to be greeted by a very rude and surly receptionist, who demanded I show her my ID. I didn't have an ID on me as I was only visiting friends at their hotel. As I didn't have my ID, she made the security guard follow me to my room, treating me as some sort of criminal. When I got to my room, my room card worked perfectly fine and the door opened... It appears the problem was their lift, not my room key, yet I was the one treated with suspicion and distain!

Finally, upon checking out, the hotel tried to charge us for a meal in their restaurant... Their restaurant that we never visited! This was while our Uber to the airport was waiting for us and we just needed to check out and go. Instead, I was again treated with suspicion by the front desk while they rectified their mistake. I was even pulling up the metadata from pictures I had taken in Pat O'Brien's at the time they were claiming we had this meal, just to prove my case. They did eventually remove the charge, but only after a lot of arguing and again being treated like dirt.

Have stayed a few times in New Orleans and can honestly say this is the single worst hotel experience we have had in the city. We have had wonderful stays at the InterContinental in Budapest and Park Lane but this hotel is absolutely nowhere near the same standard....

Having been allocated a room with an inter connecting door our issue started at 01.00 in the morning when we were awoken by the sound of loud music and other ‘noises’ from the room next door. After an hour we contacted reception to ask if they could request that the guests be a little quieter by at least turning the music down. 45 minutes or so later with no change in the noise level we went to reception and asked for some assistance as by this stage we just needed to sleep. The two ladies in reception offered a different room which was acceptable. I made what I considered to be a reasonable request considering the time, the lack of response to our earlier call and the fact that nobody would be using our room till much later in the day, that we be allowed to move our belongings early (08.00 ish) that morning. The ladies simply said no as a guest couldn’t ‘have’ two rooms. I highlighted it didn’t seem fair to expect a guest, at that time of the morning to pack when all they desperately needed was sleep and no one else would be given our initial room until housekeeping had been to clean it. The response was housekeeping starts from 07.30 (it seem to be our initial room would somehow be the first to be cleaned…seriously)?||A ‘speech; then followed that if our initial room on the 9th floor was robbed in the next 5 hours it wouldn’t be the hotel’s responsibility. I had taken 2 steps away from reception when one of the staff threw her pen at her computer screen in a fit of temper. At approximately 08.00 we returned to our original room, packed and returned the key to reception. The room thankfully hadn’t been robbed and housekeeping were nowhere to be seen. Later that morning I spoke to a manager from reception as I wasn’t happy with petulant and unreasonable attitude of the staff. She immediately stated she had been made aware of the issue and the staff had been correct, a guest COULD NOT have two rooms to which I simply pointed out that between 03.00 and 08.30 we had in fact had two rooms so she was arguing a point which was clearly untrue. Sadly it appeared she was incapable of understanding she was taking a stand point of arguing against something which had actually already happened. ||We experienced several other issues such as a number of inaccuracies on our bill adding to an overcharge close to $100. Our key stopped working at noon when we were promised it wouldn’t as we had a 4pm checkout time, with a member of staff knocking on the door only a couple of minutes after 12noon and a second member of staff entering the room. The plumbing in the bathroom made a loud banging noise. On checking out a gentleman called Mark finally showed some empathy with regards our experience which was appreciated.||We have stayed in Intercontinental Hotels across 4 continents and have never experienced staff who are not prepared to try and understand the specifics of a guest’s issues. Had the noise issue been at 10 am, 3 pm or even 11 pm then I would have understood and accepted the request to pack and move but at 3 am I would have hoped and expect any staff to be more understanding of the situation and more flexible in trying to resolve it rather than having...