Holiday Inn Express Raleigh, NE Medical center — Hotel in Raleigh

At approx. 9:30am on 01/01/2023, I called the hotel directly and spoke to a female at front desk before I booked non-refundable reservation for that night. I was advised that they had parking for a box truck behind the hotel. I was also advised that less than 50% of their rooms were booked; so, parking the truck would not be an issue.||||I arrived at the hotel at approx 5:30pm. There were approx 5 vehicles parked in the front of the hotel including employee vehicles. I proceeded to the back parking lot. You have to drive up a hill with multiple speed bumps to reach the back parking lot. There is no space to turn around (especially if there is another truck already parked in the back parking lot). There is an entrance to the back parking lot. However, there is gate that is permanently locked and completely UNUSABLE!!!||||I turned around in an extremely tight space and had to drive on curbs to turn around in the back parking lot. I drove to the front of the hotel to park. I had to maneuver the truck around the tight turns to get to the front. This included driving into parking spaces to pull forward and back up. When I parked in the front of the hotel, Raj, the Front Desk Clerk, came out and told me I had to park the truck in the back. He said he would not check me in or give me the keys if I did not move the truck. I told him I would be happy to park in the back if he opened the gate. I told him I had to depart the hotel at 6:30am, and I would be stuck in the back parking lot if vehicles parked in the corners of the parking lot because I would not be able to make the turns to get out. Raj claimed that he did not have keys to the gate. He said the only people that had the keys were the ||owners, and they were in India.||||I advised Raj that I was a an IHG Gold Elite Member with a non-refundable reservation at this hotel. I advised him that I called the hotel that morning and the woman at the front desk assured me that I could park my truck in the parking lot with no problem. He said if he checked me in and a guest asked him in the middle of the night why that truck was parked there that he would call me in the middle of the night and demand that I move the truck to the back parking lot. I told him I would not move the truck. I told him he could advise the guest that trucks are not able to park in the back because they would be stuck due to a locked gate. I told him that I was a paying customer with a reservation traveling on business. I told him that there are plenty of spaces around the hotel for guests to park.||||I told him I found it hard to believe that no one else has a key to the back gate. He said the General Manager, Eva, has a key. I said call Eva and ask her to come unlock the gate. Then, I would move the truck to the back. He called Eva. Reluctantly, Eva told Raj to let me park in the front since I had called the hotel that morning. When he got off the phone with Eva, he told me again that he will call me in the middle of the night to move the truck if needed. I called IHG, canceled the room and booked another...

I am very disappointed with the staff in remediating an honest billing mistake. Times must be rough for this location. As an IHG member, I inadvertently made a double Holiday Inn Express booking at the Medical center location and at the downtown Holiday Inn location in Raleigh. I checked in at the downtown location, not knowing I had booked a duplicate night at the Medical Center. Obviously, I did not check into the Medical Center as I was staying at the downtown location. Mr . Prem, the manager of the Holiday Inn NE Medical center was unwilling to provide a refund for the night I didn't stay at his hotel; eventhough Holiday Inn received full revenue from my downtown stay. After numerous calls, Mr Prem agreed with me recognizing it as an error, but that since he (the hotel) didn't respond to my request within 48 hours -- like the IHG rules mention -- the hotel was hit with a penalty for not responding. Consequently, Mr. Prem blamed me for his misstep, and now is holding the amount of a one night stay for the hotel to keep. Initially he agreed with me that mistakes can happen, but reversed himself because he didn't follow his company's own rules, and now is punishing the customer for his mistake of not contacting the customer within 48 hours. The way he looks at it is that he's not going to lose my revenue and get hit with a penalty, too. So, too bad for the customer. Beware.

I book hotel rooms all the time and am well aware of all the spurious cancellation tricks the reservation systems throw at you. When there's an honest mistake, and yet the hotel ownership would not bend -- for the sake of future business, and being an IHG member -- to help the customer, it is a signal to beware of the policies of this property.

My complaint is with the hypocritical and punitive policies of the management of this property and not with the property itself, per se (as I didn't stay at that property -- but be wary of the Downtown Holiday Inn, as well. It wasn't the best service either.) And IHG Customer Care Center was unable to help. So much for customer care.

Mr Prem doesn't realize or doesn't care about long term goals of the hotel , and only cares about the short term business gains of one night. “To heck with membership, and to heck with the customer,” should be the motto of the...

I booked this hotel room on points for my husband who had just went through a terrible Airbnb experience in Raleigh. I also booked a second room not on points for his friend. Everything started out fantastic with the staff being super helpful and accommodating with adding the guys names to the reservations and making sure payment was taken care of before they arrived. When they checked in, my husband signed for a room on the third floor, but was given a key to a different room on the third floor and one number off from the one listed on the paperwork. He assumed this was a typo and took all his things to to the room he had a key for, unpacked, and promptly left to go to a baseball game. Once back, he couldn't get into his room and went to inquire at the front desk. They had given him the wrong key and had taken all of his belongings out of the room and put them in a giant black hefty bag, which was behind the front desk. How embarrassing! We still do not understand what the mix up was or why it was necessary to remove all of his belongings from a room that they had given him, regardless of whether it was supposed to be for someone else later. I would think they would just reassign the other party to a different room. I have never had anyone take all my belongings out of a room. He then had to get a new key, and take his hefty sack to his new room and unpack yet again. I watched via FaceTime while my husband pulled all of his things out one by one from his hefty bag. The front desk clerk was nice and apologetic about it all and even called and spoke to her manager, but nothing was offered as compensation for the inconvenience and embarrassment. As a loyal IHG customer and Diamond Elite member, I find this to be unacceptable and quite shocking performance for IHG. And to end it all, the HVAC did not work in his new room, but at this point it was after 11 pm and wasn't worth switching rooms yet again or even trying to get someone to come fix it. Thank goodness his stay was...