Holiday Inn Express & Suites San Diego - Mission Valley by IHG — Hotel in San Diego

If you’re coming to San Diego and find yourself doing a lot of driving, then Hotel Circle is probably the way to go when it comes to finding a relatively safe place to park your car (even if it’s not always free), not to mention a decent place to call home base. That said, deciding between all the different hotels and motels in Hotel Circle can be pretty daunting, and navigating Hotel Circle can be a bit of a pain, so you kind of suffer a bit for being somewhat centrally located relative to things to do.

It actually took me a while to get used to where to turn to get to the Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Hotel Circle (the San Diego Fashion Valley location), as many of the hotels and motels in the area share lots. Hotel Iris is right in front of this Holiday Inn Express & Suites, and two of the three entrances into this shared lots are considered Hotel Iris’, with the third being Holiday Inn Express & Suites’ entrance. To make matters worse, the Hotel Iris entrance and exit are each one way only, so you’re in for a real treat if you get them mixed up, as these ways in and out are quite tight.

Holiday Inn Express & Suites, PLEASE, find some way to better mark your own entrance and exit. Your sign doesn’t stick out nearly enough during the day due to the trees blocking it from the one direction.

The hotel makes a nice first impression with a very clean lobby that you can look straight through to find the pool. Behind and to the right of the front desk leads to the first floor rooms and elevators. Using the elevators can be a bit of an adventure, as you need to scan the card key for your room to access any floor aside from the basement and the first floor. If you forget this, then you’ll find yourself pressing the floor to your room but visiting the basement or first floor instead, which can lead to some confusion given how poorly marked the floors are. Yes, I’m aware the elevator displays the floor numbers, but some very blatant marking on the wall opposite the elevators for each floor would’ve been nice to see.

Now, I want to mention the parking situation here, as it tends to get a lot of flak in the reviews. I, personally, wasn’t a huge fan of the outside lot, and yeah, even the underground garage is pretty tight for larger vehicles, but I found that the underground garage provided me with more in the way of privacy and convenience. I generally prefer motels, as it’s nice to have direct access to your room in case you picked up groceries or don’t feel like parading an occasional guest past the front desk staff, and the underground garage here helps out somewhat in both regards. I was also lucky enough to get a room that was really close to the elevator, though I did run into several people along the way that did make things a smidge awkward, so your mileage with the convenience and guest stuff certainly will vary. Just make sure your guest is presentable.

The room I was in made a nice first impression as far as cleanliness goes, but some brief exploration revealed three seemingly non-functional light switches and a non-functional panel for the cooling/heating system. The latter in particular worried me, as I initially thought I’d be unable to adjust the temperature in my room, but it turns out that I just had to adjust it at the unit underneath the window, despite a sign on that unit claiming that I couldn’t do so and would need to use the non-functional wall panel.

I’m not understanding why I so often get a room with an alarm clock that isn’t set anywhere close to the correct time, but it happened with this one, as well.

There’s a fridge in a cabinet underneath the TV, and I found the fact that it was slightly elevated off of the floor compared to other fridges kind of nice. I really wish the fridge was placed higher, though. I’d be careful with what you put in the fridge, though, as I bought some cantaloupe spears that ended up frozen (and quite refreshing, due to the heat outside, mind you), but that could’ve just as easily been a soda can that could’ve exploded. Just don’t put anything you don’t want frozen too close to that freezer compartment at the top.

The room has plenty of outlets in plain view, and they’re mostly in convenient locations. Some of the lamps even have outlets built in, adding to the convenience. Lighting is kind of hit or miss, with some of the lamps barely contributing to the overall brightness of the room and the color temperature between lighting fixtures varying between cold and warm with no way to adjust the majority of them. Annoyingly, the lamps all use switches that’re on the lamps themselves, rather than switched outlets that could’ve made some sense of those non-functional light switches.

There are two TVs in the room I stayed in, with one of them not being properly connected to its cable box. Thankfully, I simply had to turn the TV enough to reach the HDMI port and plug in the stray cable, but it’s somewhat irritating that this wasn’t checked after the previous guest(s) checked out. Notably, neither of these TVs had a sleep timer enabled, though they did have motion smoothing on, and the remotes provided don’t allow access to the service menu.

The bathroom is interesting, to say the least. I wanted a jetted tub, and I was happy to see that the jetted tub is against a wall with a cutout that lets you see into the rest of the hotel room. I’m confused as to why there’s an outer door for the bathroom, though, as there’s no privacy in the first portion of the bathroom from the rest of the room, anyway. Perhaps more irritating, this outer door for the bathroom closes on its own, and it’s not even practical to prop it open, as it opens toward the entry door to the entire hotel room, so you’d be blocking that other door if you propped it open. As such, if you’re going between the bathroom and the rest of the room a lot, then you’re going to hear that door close a lot.

There’s a second door in the bathroom that leads to the shower and toilet. First, I have to say that the combination of shower and toilet for that smaller room is a bit odd. Second, while I understand the reasoning for having the toilet tucked away in a separate room and even having a door there, I really wish they could’ve used a folding door or pocket door, rather than using a frosted glass door that obviously doesn’t provide full privacy and manages to block the view of the TV from the toilet.

As far as the rest of the hotel room goes, honestly, I just think the furniture selection feels a bit off. It just feels like someone felt the need to fill nearly every piece of available space with furniture, so I had two chairs flanking the second TV and an ottoman that was kind of squeezed underneath the coffee table. And I’m still not quite understanding the point of there being two TVs, as you can easily see each one from either the bed or the sofa. I would’ve preferred that the desk with the second TV and phone on it instead be cleared off with the exception of the lamp, as I could’ve more easily fit my luggage on top in its open position. Shouldn’t the phone be next to the bed, anyway?

Housekeeping seems inconsistent. I didn’t place the door hanger to keep housekeeping away on my door, yet housekeeping didn’t seem to visit my room on at least two separate days. I’m not sure if I simply missed them knocking while I was still in the room or if they simply never tried to visit my room, but it took longer to get rid of some of the trash from my initial grocery run at the...

So let me start by saying hotel is clean, fancy fresh coffee maker close to the freeway so easy to get anywhere in San Diego. The pool I believe is even heated. Would have been great. IF NOT for the TERRIBLE service. We get into our room and the tv is completely not working, no big deal we call the front desk this was around 5:00 pm, the guy at the desk said he is sending someone, perfect! 30 minutes later no one shows and we had a dinner reservation no big deal we figured some one would just come in and look at it. We weren’t gone very long and when we got back tv was still not working ok we figured maybe they didn’t feel comfortable coming inside when we weren’t gone no big deal I called again once again they said someone would be coming up. AGAIN 30 minutes later no one shows up so once again I called and I asked if they weren’t going to fix the TV could we please get moved rooms and this time they tell me sorry our tech is not here today!! SO THIS WHOLE TIME SINCE 5pm that I had been waiting they couldn’t have said that! So then I asked fine can we please get a different room we don’t care if it’s smaller and at this point it’s later in the evening and they tell me oh sorry we don’t have any other rooms we are fully booked. Now I’m getting upset because they could’ve told me this at 5pm when I called! So I asked them to find a room or refund my money and we would go elsewhere since we weren’t paying for what we reserved, we had already reserved a king bed and got two queens but we said ok it’s fine but now this. So 20 minutes later the front desk gentleman shows up with like 10 remote controls and tries them all and says I’m sorry nothing I can do. I asked him if we could at least get some kind of compensation since we didn’t get our king bed and no tv. He said talk to the manager in the morning which I understood, he’s just the evening guy. So next morning we went to talk to the manager and asked for some kind of compensation since we paid for a room and didn’t get a king didn’t get a TV and we literally weren’t asking for a lot just comp the $25 parking which is clearly a scam and the snack we got from the lobby which was 2 ice cream sandwiches and MnMs and the manager tells us she will take off the parking (which is a scam they don’t need to charge) and would “investigate the snacks”. Needless to say she did NOT comp 2 ice cream sandwiches and MnMs . NOR did she act like she cared.

It wasn’t even about not having a TV like I said we are very patient it was the run around they gave us, the time we wasted waited around when we could’ve been enjoy the pool and the absolutely terrible service and ability of the manger to find an actual resolution to satisfy her customers. It would have cost her nothing to comp two ice cream sandwiches and MnMs after a night of terrible service.

If it wasn’t for the way the manager and her staff handled this I would actually love this hotel, but now I will NEVER stay...

Stay Date: 6/16/2024

Room: 2 queen bed suite with Sofa Bed and ADA accessible shower.

Recognized IHG rewards

STAFF : Every member of the staff was approachable and did their job professionally, nothing more and nothing less than that was felt when talking with them.

ROOM: The room was clean, comfortable and the AC/heater worked very well. The bathroom was thoroughly cleaned and looked updated with no signs of water damage. There was somebody else's hair on one of the towels, but it wasn't anything truly offensive or unsanitary. The cleaning staff work hard to keep rooms clean and our room was definitely clean.

The bed was good, but a little harder than a standard mattress in my opinion. There was a good selection of TV channels and the Wifi worked fine.

POOL AREA: The pool was clean and there were tables, chairs and an outdoor couch to sit and relax at. The pool water was heated perfectly (Just a little under the temp of cooler bath water). Plus, the way the location of the pool area allows the hotels' upper floors to provide great shade by about 3:00 PM. The pool area and relaxing open air lobby are the hotels best features. The Pool towels need to be replaced, these towels looked and felt like they had been used and washed a thousand times.

BREAKFAST/SNACK SHOP: Breakfast was the least impressive part of the stay. There was a gentleman and lady working the breakfast area on Monday 6/17. I felt the lady worked harder than the gentleman did. The pancake machine was empty, somebody asked the gentleman to fix it.T The gentleman then went to get the lady to replace the pancake batter in the machines, but she was busy finishing cooking the breakfast potatoes, I didn't understand why he just didn't do it himself... The cranberry juice from the juice machine was watered down and I was going to tell the the gentleman about it, but he was making himself look busy stuffing more forks and spoons into the utensil holders even though the holders were almost completely filled with utensils. It appeared he was just doing easy jobs to look like he was busy and couldn't be bothered, but that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. The snack shop provided a nice selection of snacks, soft drinks, beer, microwave meals and any emergency toiletries you need.

CONS: Somebody really needs to cut the tree branch that is directly in front of the Holiday Inn and Suites sign. Breakfast could benefit from being run better with more organization and a little better work ethic from each member assigned. Also, as it is with many hotels located in city/convenient locations, charging money for parking when you have your own lot is very lame.

Overall, a Holiday Inn Express and Suites that my family and I would happily stay at again due to the wonderful pool area, I just wouldn't have high expectations at breakfast time like I would have for...