Holiday Inn Express & Suites Oklahoma City Airport by IHG — Hotel in Oklahoma City

I stayed at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites Oklahoma City Airport for 2 nights in October 2024 (it is easily confused with the normal Holiday Inn that is 0.3 miles away).

The room was good, the location was acceptable (great if you need close proximity to the airport, not so great if you want to spend a lot of time downtown), but unfortunately the service was terrible due to an extremely rude front desk employee.

I thought the room was pretty good (3 stars). I was surprised by how spacious it was. However, it does turn out that I was assigned an "accessible" hotel room (the hotel reservation was made on my behalf so I didn't choose the room type). The room seemed clean and I didn't have any major issues. The bed was extremely soft and fluffy. Two of my colleagues complained about the beds being way too soft - they had back issues the following days as a result. I was okay with the very soft beds but it was a little irregular.

The bathroom door did not lock (it seemed broken) and pulling the door closed and pulling it open was awkward and took a surprising amount of effort.

The shower setup was a little confusing. I had to turn one faucet on to start the water (and which controlled the temperature). Then I had to pull up on one knob for water to come out of one shower head. And then I had to turn a second faucet to get the water to come out of the other shower head. However, this setup might be due to the accessible nature of the room.

There is supposed to be a free shuttle to/from the airport, that takes about 15 minutes each way. I didn't use it because I got rides from colleagues. However, it was inconvenient getting to the downtown area. Both days we had to use Uber/Lyfts. So if you plan to do anything downtown, then you should factor in transportation costs when deciding what hotel to book.

My biggest complaint was the rudeness of one front desk employee (other employees I interacted with were fine). A few days before my stay, I had called and asked about early check-in. The person I talked to was nice and they said early check-in could not be guaranteed but if I called that morning and mentioned I was an IHG member (which I am) that there would be a good chance of getting early check-in. That morning around 8 AM I tried calling and was told the hotel had been fully booked the night before and there was nothing available at the moment but maybe there would be a room available when I arrived at the hotel.

When I arrived at 12 PM noon, the front desk employee was incredibly rude. Before I even finished asking my question, she interrupted to say there was no early check-in available. She let my colleague and I put our luggage in a conference room but she was discourteous even when doing that. It was very off-putting having to deal with such an impolite person. My colleague was even more offended - she asked me why someone would choose to work in the hospitality industry with such a hostile attitude!

I am totally okay with there not being rooms available for early check-in. But how you communicate something (especially bad news) is important and this employee had a terrible bedside manner / soft skills / communication technique.

I had other colleagues who arrived later in the day and they must have encountered a different employee. None of them reported any issues. And the employees I interacted with on subsequent...

Holiday Inn Express is our go-to hotel when traveling. We look at availability in those places and almost always stay at a Holiday Inn Express. We've been doing so for year and in different states and cities. In all those visits, we've only had a couple of issues that we were concerned with.

However, with our stay at this Holiday Inn Express, we exceeded all past issues in just one visit.

The check-in was smooth as silk and was done online. At the front desk I only had to show an ID and get my keys. The room appeared clean and we commented how this room was similar to all previous visits at other Holiday Inn Express hotels. The only issue that night was we noticed a beeping, maybe some type of alarm, coming from down the hall. Once we closed the door and had the television on, we did not notice the sound. Still, that is not a concern compared to what we dealt with the next morning.

While my wife was getting ready for our day and in the bathroom, I was watching television. It was then I noticed a mouse along a base board and in a corner. I watched it for several minutes and it didn't move so I thought it to be dead. It was 100 percent a mouse!

We went to breakfast and found a wonderful variety of food available. Typical for Holiday Inn Express hotels. However, the sausage links were undercooked and we couldn't eat them because of this. I went back for a second cup of orange juice and as it dispensed, it looked more watery than my first cup. Sure enough, when I took a sip, it didn't even taste like orange juice. It was thrown in the trash.

Back to the room and as we were packing up to check-out, I looked in the corner where the mouse was and it was gone. So, the mouse wasn't dead after all. Good thing we had our suitcases closed so I knew we weren't taking it home.

Check-out was as smooth as check-in. I simply clicked on a button in an email sent to me and that was that. We left the card keys on the desk and we left the room.

On the way out, I wasn't so much concerned about the breakfast items not being good, but I thought someone at the hotel might want to know there was a live mouse in the room we stayed in. The woman at the front desk was busy with the computer and display. She looked up and asked if we were checking out, we said we had done so electronically, she wished us a nice day, and went into the back room. As I peeked in to say something to her, she was already on the phone so I couldn't tell her about the mouse.

For the most part, this stay was a good one; however, we had more issues at this Holiday Inn Express than at all the other stays and at other locations combined.

Will we stay at this particular hotel again?

Probably not!

There is another Holiday Inn Express not far away. It's not as convenient to get to from the airport, but we may not have to deal with the problems we did at...

When I booked this stay, I wasn't sure what I getting myself into. I haven't stayed in a Holiday Inn since I was about 28, and I am now 40.

Upon pulling into the parking lot, the appearance was 4x better than what I use to remember and the colors pop, which was a plus.

Getting checked in was a breeze. The manager, Ms. Roxanne, really helped the process go smoothly and swiftly, considering that I booked a 1 King online, but when I got there, it was registered as a double bed, which I didn't want.

Ms. Roxanne moved me into and 1 King and explained to me the error faults online within the booking website. I didn't blame it on her because it was a website issue, and with that being said, I can't hold that against her.

Once to my room, I was very impressed with the current layout and very spacious. Bed was ultra comfortable and if I could have conducted my telework training from my bed, I would have.

Breakfast was even a game changer, considering what I was use to, in regards to the traditional continental breakfast, which I can not just eat muffins and cereal.

Bacon was ultra-crispy and full of grease and not raw, like some places that I have stay at. Eggs were very edible and fluffy, juice was not over-sweetened, bread selections was good and I never seen a 1 minute instant pancake maker before. It was quite surprising. Fruit selection was just apples and oranges, but can't complain because I barely eat fruit because I generally don't have a place to store it or keep it edible in a hotel.

The only reason why I didn't give the hotel a 10 was because every day after training school when I came into the hotel and reached my room, I could not enter my room because the door card kept dying and needed to be re-keyed. (EVERY day).

I noticed this problem when I scanned the card but instead of getting the green color, the door display kept showing a yellow color so I had to go all the way back down to the front desk area and have the staff reprogram my cards.

That part was a real pain considering I had shopping bags and mini-snacks from Wal-Mart and other places and had to lug it all back down to the front desk area.

Other than that, I enjoyed my stay and will be booking again...