Holiday Inn Express & Suites Sacramento NE Cal Expo by IHG — Hotel in Sacramento

Unless you are desperate, don't stay here. It's filthy and a safety hazard. I can look past the renovations they are doing, however the place is an absolute mess. Let's start with the outside. There is a building in construction next door to one side and to the other is another hotel under renovations, and the freeway is across the street. There is ALWAYS noise!

They charge for parking; for no good reason! The parking lot is filthy and cluttered with furniture and construction materials & vehicles parked in all different directions. I got construction crud all over my shoes and tracked it everywhere: inside, into my vehicle and into the location of my business appointment.

Not all the exterior doors work, so you have to walk to the other side of the building to get in.

Some of the hallways/stairways to the exits are cluttered with construction materials (lumber, boxes of hardware, etc.). The emergency exits should not have hazards constricting your ability to get out.

The next hazard is the food. Which is supposed to be very warm to hot for safety, so as to prevent growth of bacteria, etc. Nope, eggs and sausage were cold on the edges and barely warm towards the middle. I didn't finish and ended up nauseous at my appointment later that morning, which delayed my travel by about an hour.

The third hazard were the smells in the room. It's supposed to be a newly renovated room. By the way, it would have been key to have your staff know where they moved the light switches so they can help the guest turn off the lights. I was asked to wait almost 30 minutes for the security staff to come on-duty for someone to come help me find the light switch (that is built into the side of wardrobe cabinet). I had to delay going to sleep. The pillows/bedding had a musty smell and the bathroom was strong of a bleach smell. It was a definite straight and not diluted bleach smell. An after thought, makes me wonder what happened in that bathroom that they had to douse it with straight bleach.

Now the staff, the young lady with the scar was very pleasant, all the other front desk staff were rude and made several false statements. They charged me a $50 deposit and said all hotels do it. Nope, I travel every couple weeks and I've never been charged a deposit at any hotel. I definitely have had a pre-authorization hold of the first night cost put through but not an additional deposit. They put an authorization through twice on my travel card AND one auth. and one charge on my card that I used to hold the room. I expected the one authorization to hold the room on the initial card, when I booked the room. However, one auth. was put through on my travel card when I checked in, then another one the next day, when I checked out. They claimed they didn't go through or were reversed(they didn't know). My bank said they went through and cause a hold of funds each time. I only transfer into the travel card account what is needed plus some padding in case I loose the card. I finally authorized them to charge the initial card, just to get me out of there; as they were making me late. I notified the travel card bank, to ensure they didn't pay on anything to the hotel. They said they saw more than 2 of their attempts to charge the card, beyond the 2 the hotel told me about.

When I attempted to express myself upon departure of the poor accommodations and conditions, they were curt and dismissive. It should be noted, that I do not yell, cuss, swear or be rude when expressing my concerns; they on the other-hand raised their voice, were rude...

First, let me say that almost all the staff was wonderfully polite and accommodating.

Unfortunately, this property was by far the noisiest hotel at which I can remember staying. Freeway noise woke me up several times each night, made it difficult to hear entertainment audio and phone calls, and even made it difficult to concentrate on desk work. On top of that, even though I had a late checkout arranged with the front desk and had the DND sign on the door, housekeeping knocked on the door and announced themselves (extra loudly) 45 minutes before I was required to be out of the room; note that I had been trying to take an early afternoon nap before leaving.

Additionally, the room was the smallest I had stayed in since my last trip to Japan! I always book a king size bed, but this room had about 18" to walk on the side near the window, maybe 24" to walk between the foot of the bed and the dresser / desk, and probably about the same on the other side between the bed and the bathroom wall / door. Ironically, the well-appointed bathroom was larger than that in most HIE's, and the room layout necessitated a 36" wide, 8' long hallway that was a completely wasted use of space!

But for the coup d' grace: no cinnamon rolls during the entire three-morning stay. :( A lot of us who use HIE as our primary go-to count on that little cinnamon blast of bliss as a perk to start our mornings, and HIE's without their marquis attraction are becoming far too common. It's bad enough that HIE as a brand has never returned their cinnabonnies to the decadent form they had prior to their cost-saving changes in the early 2000's; but to not even have cinnamon rolls available at even one HIE - let alone so many of them of late - is unconscionable. Seriously - you folks a the corporate purchasing / logistics management (or property management training) functions should be pilloried.

I predominantly stay at HIE because I expect a very similar, excellent experience from one hotel to the next in that mid-range business travel category. I don't remember when the last time I was disappointed with the level of quality on so many fronts at one of their hotels. Such experiences are not only unfortunate to the brand name, but it was completely disconnected from the wonderful disposition conveyed by all (3) desk managers with whom I interacted. I assume I'll return to the more 'normal' HIE experience that I have come to expect at my next stay, but I won't be staying at this property again because I highly doubt they would spend the necessary resources to...

We got a 2 queen bed with a sofa bed room. The air conditioning is so loud and the room is very humid. We had really wet spots in the carpet in our room by the air conditioner which was gross as we don't know if it was the air conditioner or something else. Either way, It was gross. The bathroom toilet seat was too small for toilet itself. Only 2 sets of towels for a 2 queen bedroom room? We had to ask every evening for extra towels. On the 1st night, the body wash ran out. They stopped by and gave us a new bottle but the bottle was of such poor quality that the pump didn't even work. How frustrating!

Breakfast varied every day. The super watery oatmeal was frustrating because seemed like staff didn't know how oatmeal was supposed to be prepared. Breakfast rotated between few things as we stayed for just about a week. The breakfast attendant always worked hard to keep things stocked. The juice machine was broken the entire time we were there but they did have juice pitchers in the refrigerator. There was room service daily but they didn't clean very well until 1 of the days, I stayed back at the hotel and seemed like the manager to the housekeeping ladies knocked on my door to see if I had room service yet. I told her no. She said to give her 5 minutes. A housekeeper surely enough came by, I gave her a tip and wow! She cleaned up the bathroom and foyer area so nicely! I was very happy!

Overall, service was always excellent! Homelessness is a problem in this area however this hotel is central to so many delicious restaurants. Parking is $10/day. Refrigerator was turned off before when we just checked in and the refrigerator smelled SO SO MUSTY! Even when we turned the refrigerator to the coolest setting, the smell that smelled like stinky feet ruined all of our food! How disheartening. I would not stay here again with all the negatives. Our family was so ready to check it! The lack of ventilation/fan in the bathroom caused so much moisture and the bathroom to be so hot and humid. We had the keep the bathroom door propped during the day with the air running the entire time in order to prevent us having a smelly musty hotel room with a hot moist bathroom. Location is NOT a good enough reason to stay here. I wish we had...