Holiday Inn Express & Suites Ocean City - Northside by IHG — Hotel in Ocean City

Update after stay 12/1/24: Improved Experience, but Still Room for Growth

Upon arrival, I chose not to bring up the initial issue again, but it seems the staff or IHG alerted the General Manager about the situation. To their credit, they found a room with a king bed, though it was an ADA accessible room. While I didn’t specifically request an ADA room, I appreciated their effort to resolve the matter.

The room itself was clean and comfortable, with some notable features. The bathroom was also clean, though the wallpaper showed signs of damage, likely from water leakage. To be fair, the website does mention ongoing bathroom renovations on certain floors, so I assume this will be addressed soon. The room featured a modern electronic window shade, which was a nice touch, though it lacked a privacy sheer. This meant you either let in natural light with no privacy or kept the shade down entirely — something that could use improvement.

Where this hotel truly shined was the exceptional friendliness of the staff. Everyone went out of their way to greet us and ensure we had everything we needed, which isn’t something you experience at every property. This level of service helped offset the earlier frustrations and left a positive impression.

One area for improvement is parking during events. The hotel backs to Northside Park, which hosted Winterfest of Lights during our stay. While this was a wonderful activity to enjoy, the lack of parking control was frustrating. After a day out, we returned to find ourselves competing for parking with event attendees, despite being hotel guests. The hotel should consider issuing parking passes during such events and enforcing parking restrictions to ensure guests have spaces.

In the end, the staff’s efforts and the overall experience recovered from the initial misstep, and I’ll continue staying with the IHG brand. That said, this situation should have never occurred in the first place. Guests deserve to feel confident that their reservations will be honored without needing intervention.

If you’re booking this hotel during popular times like Winterfest or July 4th, be aware of the potential parking challenges and plan accordingly.

Disappointing Experience with Holiday Inn Express & Suites Ocean City - Northside and IHG Policies

I booked a stay at this property for 11/29/24 - 12/01/24, using 37,000 IHG points + $58 to secure a standard room with a king bed. As an IHG member, I expected a seamless experience, but this reservation left me extremely dissatisfied.

About 24 hours before check-in, I received a notification to e-check in. To my surprise, my room had been switched to one with 2 queen beds instead of the king bed I originally reserved. I immediately called the property to resolve the issue, only to be told that when you pay with points, they give you whatever is available, and no king beds were available.

This completely undermines the purpose of making a reservation — reserving your preferred selection. If a king bed was unavailable at the time of booking, I would have chosen differently or booked elsewhere.

I then called IHG directly, hoping for a resolution, but they were equally unhelpful. It’s incredibly frustrating as a frequent traveler and loyal IHG customer to see points accumulated through loyalty treated as secondary. Worse, I still paid $58 in taxes and fees, further adding to my disappointment. Had I known reservations made with points could be disregarded, I wouldn’t have used them — or booked at this hotel at all.

This experience has seriously soured me on the IHG brand. Points are supposed to make loyal customers feel valued, not disregarded. Whether this issue stems from IHG or the local hotel doesn’t matter — this reflects poorly on both.

I’ll update this review after my stay with details on room quality and location, but as of now, this will most likely be my last IHG stay if this is how they treat their...

Way above my expectations! After just leaving a birthday vacation for my daughter at Great Wolf Lodge in Perryville, I'd rather stay here again instead! We've been to quite a few hotels recently because of my daughter competing in gymnastics and I have to say, this one topped a lot of them tbh.

First off, Great Wolf is hardly a year old, yet go ahead and look at any corner of that building... It's covered in hair and dust and yuck! It's disgusting! But looking at this holiday inn for comparison, the corners were spotless! I'm not a picky person by any means, but I actually got a toenail fungus last time I went there and apparently looking at their reviews, I'm not the only one. And since my daughter had a competition get moved up to the same weekend after our GWL trip, we left there to come here to H.I the same day. And I'm glad honestly because our daughter may have enjoyed it but my hubby and I were very displeased for many reasons which I won't get into, but this Holiday Inn was SUCH a relief from all of that!! They were absolutely fantastic.

The pool was one of the warmest I've ever been in! It felt SO good! I'm pretty darn sure it was warmer than GWL too! And everything was very clean in and around the pool. The outdoor area was closed but looks nice as well. We really enjoyed the pool, especially since we had it all to ourselves after being elbow to elbow with people at the waterpark at GWL. Why they built so many rooms for such a little waterpark, I'll never know.

Bonus, there's a chipotle right out front you can walk to! They also have free breakfast here which is always a plus for us as a family. The staff is just awesome all around, the front desk, the maids, everyone was SO friendly. At other places I feel like I'm a bother and I can't stand that because it's not hard to make someone feel welcome. That wasn't the case here luckily. The maid even asked us as we passed by going into our room if we needed anything. Those little efforts didn't go unnoticed! Thank you! They made us feel very welcome and I don't think we care to try a different hotel if we stay in the area again. I'd like to come back here for sure! Especially for their Dove soap shampoo and conditioner! A hotel that FINALLY doesn't have 2 in 1 poo/condish, because hunny that stuff works for NO ONE! I actually liked the Dove so much I might buy some.

This place was clean, friendly, affordable, and on point. I was beginning to think maybe my hubby and I are just being particular about the hotels we stay at because we always seem to have issues. But after staying here I know it's definitely not us! We're happy with a clean hotel and friendly staff, that's all it takes! Oh, and free breakfast! 😅

We truly enjoyed our stay, I know they say sometimes you need a vacation from your vacation, well this was exactly that for us after a stressful 3 day stay at GWL! We even added a second night because we enjoyed it so much here. Thank you to everyone here for all your...

Visited this hotel for New Years weekend and have already decided this hotel is where we will spend next New Years weekend also. The hotel was beautifully decorated for the holiday season and our room overlooked the wonderful 'Winterfest of Lights' display on Northside Park. The staff were so friendly and accommodating to our needs and the hotel and our suite were clean and fresh. This hotel offers an express breakfast, which has a variety of hot and cold breakfast food options, plus juices, coffees, hot chocolate, milk and fresh fruit, with bright and clean dining areas to enjoy your breakfast selections in, The staff working this express breakfast area are on top of keeping food and coffee hot and available, as it can get very busy some mornings. Our suite was well laid out and very spacious, with a small kitchen area with a sink, microwave, coffee maker with instant coffee/coffee fixings and mini-refrigerator/freezer, plus a cabinet with some packaged utensils, plates and bowls. Suite had a nice sofa with end table and lamp, small coffee table, low bureau with good size flat screen TV with plenty of channels, work desk with high back office chair and desk light, an armed chair with a floor lamp, a perfect triple sheeted king bed with soft and firm pillows, two night stands with nice lamps, an open closet area and a brightly lit, well designed bathroom with a jetted tub/shower, soap and other bath needs, a hair dryer... and ample towels/wash clothes provided. Lighting in the suite was very nice, with both the table lamps and floor lap and several ceiling and wall lights. The cooling/heating unit was found below the wide full window of the suite, with sheer and solid curtains. There were ample power outlets, as each table lamp had 2 power outlets in the bases, plus several wall outlets. The free high speed wi-fi was easy to connect to, using the supplied ID and password and was indeed fast. Hotel staff were all very friendly and seemed to value our business and were always striving to make our visit as enjoyable and relaxing as they could, especially the front desk personnel, the express breakfast staff and our exceptional housekeeping staffer... 'kudos' to them all! The hotel also has a pool/whirlpool and gym areas, though we did not partake of those services this visit. We did however use the 'cash only' convenience store in the lobby for sodas and snack items. We would definitely reccommend this hotel (and already have to family and friends) as an option for staying in Ocean City, MD on...