Holiday Inn Express Long Island City E - New York by IHG — Hotel in New York

From the moment I checked in to the moment I checked out, this was the worst experience I've ever had at a Holiday Inn Express. Upon arrival the clerk was pleasant enough, but it seemed English was not her primary language and she had to defer to her very busy coworker several times to have my questions answered. That poor guy was doing his best to speak to someone on the phone, help someone at the desk, and help her all at the same time. While standing there I happened to notice another man poking around in what appeared to be the fire alarm box behind the front counter. I didn't think much of this until the following morning.

While checking in I mentioned I needed parking. I had seen the entrance to what I thought was the only parking garage to the right of the front entrance. I had no idea there was a whole other entrance to a rear garage behind the building until I happened to be standing there a short while later while a friend was checking in. I already knew there were no parking spaces left as I had taken the last one in this garage and mentioned this to my friend and the desk agents. They informed him of this rear garage, which I would have much preferred to park in. The garage in the front has two large garage doors, however the one that should be an entrance door is closed with a lot of items stored behind it. This leaves one door for cars both entering and exiting to use. That's incredibly dangerous and inconvenient as it forces cars to have to stop and back up to allow others to pass the opposite direction. Upon entering this garage I found the aforementioned last space. It was incredibly tight and I had to wedge my car in while worrying about it being damaged by others. To add to this frustration, the elevator in the garage was not working so I had to carry our belongings back up the ramp to the side door back into the hotel.

Finally making it to our room on the 15th floor, it appeared fine. After completing the requisite bed bug check and finding all looked good, we got comfortable for a while before heading out for a wedding reception. Returning around 12:30 in the morning, we went to sleep around 1 am. This didn't last long as all night long we could hear doors slamming shut. Why are there no devices installed on these doors to prevent them from slamming? At one point I got up to look out in the hallway, only to be inundated with an incredibly strong smell of marijuana. Finally getting to sleep, that guy poking around in the fire alarm box suddenly made sense when we were rudely awoken by the fire alarm going off. After going off several more times, a voice finally came over the system telling us it was a false alarm. Eventually falling back asleep, we were woken once again by more false alarms. I eventually gave up on sleeping and decided to take a shower.

As this was the first I had looked in the shower, I somehow wasn't surprised to find a bunch of long hairs on the shower wall. There's no way housekeeping should have missed this. Upon stepping one foot into the shower I slid like I was on ice and almost fell. Carefully stepping back in, I found a lot of black dirt washing off the bottom of my feet. Apparently the floors in the room were not nearly as clean as I had thought as this was the only place I had walked around in bare feet. Whatever was on the floor must have been very oily to have made me slide like that. The shower itself was okay, though there wasn't a lot of water pressure and the temperature fluctuated quite a bit.

We never made it to breakfast as we were way too tired from being woken up all night long. But my friend who also stayed there that night informed me later on that he had gone and in his words, "there was pretty much no food at all."

At long last it was time to check out. Upon arriving back at the front desk, the clerk just looked at me without saying anything. I handed her my key without any proper acknowledgement. There was no thank you for staying with us. No offer of a receipt or copy of my bill. And not surprisingly, absolutely no apologies for the shocking fire alarms waking us up numerous times that morning. We gathered our belongings, carried them back down the ramp to the parking garage and carefully made our way out of there.

To be honest, I'm angry about my experience here. This hotel is quite new, but it's certainly been open long enough to have ironed out these issues. I really can't recommend a stay here at this point and I honestly wish I had some recourse to get my money back for my own experience. I will happily patronize other Holiday Inn Express locations (and have done so while leaving glowing reviews), but this was a once and done experience...

Wow.. where to start? First of all, as a long time IHG Diamond Elite with a son living in LIC/Queens I really wanted to like this hotel. I mean it's a new building, the rooms are standard HIE rooms, and the bed was comfy... but, the shortcomings are overwhelming. I can't recommend the hotel based on the following reasons:

1. Elevators... I was here over a full weekend and most of the time only 1 elevator was in service for 20 floors of guests. Let me repeat that - only 1 elevator. Turns out the staff would lock out 1-2 of the elevators repeatedly during the busiest time of the day for guests to allow their staff to move freely for cleaning etc. This led to 20+ minute waits for the elevator in the morning during breakfast and check-out and often in the afternoon during check-in. Imagine waiting 20-30 mins then having to sardine yourself into an elevator certainly testing it's maximum capacity.. just to get out of the hotel in the AM. If you book a room here, book a low floor so you can use the stairs. If I could give a zero for service I would due the the ignorant and obstinate elevator policies towards paying guests. The breakfast is the lowest quality IHC breakfast I've had in a long time as well.

2. Neighborhood... wow, I did not feel safe here. Graffiti and gang tags fill every brick wall surrounding the hotel. The streets around the hotel have broken down cars littering them. Drug addled homeless people wander the area 24 hours a day. Human feces can be found around one side of the building. Razor wire adorns every nearby business. The parking is split into two garages and the rear facing garage is open all the time with zero security visible or available. The only decent food nearby is Bantry Bay Publick House - (this pub is excellent) and Angelo's Pizza. If you don't want pub food and pizza every day you are SOL. The walk north on Van Dam St to the nicer parts of LIC across Queen's bridge will take you past the NYC in-city correctional facility (prison), defunct gas stations, and some really cagey/non-marked low-cost commercial space.

This hotel is quite literally "on the wrong side of the rail-road...

Only consider this property if you're ok with having a disturbed night sleep and being gaslit by rude staff.

I went down to the hotel reception on the first night because even after closing the curtains a lot of light was entering the room so I assumed I must have been doing something wrong. The staff member at the desk said that they weren't blackout curtains and that if I had closed the front curtain that would be it. Given the extent of light coming in, I didn't believe this could be the case and managed to persuade the staff member to come up to the room to confirm which he did reluctantly. The staff member was exceptionally rude and insisted that was as much light could be blocked from the window, that all rooms were like this, and that there was no problem at all. I asked if they had any similar complaints and he insisted I was the first. I could barely sleep during my stay because of the light.

I tried again to speak to staff the next day and was met by a similar rude response. I then gave up speaking to the site team and spoke to IHG head office who were more sympathetic and said that they would get a member of the site team to contact me. I had to chase multiple times with head office before someone from the hotel would speak to me. This time they claimed that there was an additional curtain that could be drawn to block the light, so either a) this wasn't available in the room I was allocated, or b) the on site team lied to me, i'm not sure which.

I asked for a refund because I barely slept during my stay and that was the sole purpose of staying here as you wouldn't stay for the facilities. After numerous back and forth, they finally offered a partial refund. I waited a week to see if it came back to my card but it hadn't, so I contacted again. Now they are completely ignoring my emails.

The response I got from the hotel team make me think this isn't a one off issue and a systemic problem. This hotel is a horrible stain on...