Hotel Indigo San Diego-Gaslamp Quarter by IHG — Hotel in San Diego

Before I get too far into this review, I want to clarify the "Reflects Neighborhood" rating. I gave this hotel an "Excellent" rating in this regard not because it reflects the qualities (or lack thereof) of the downtown San Diego area but rather because it reflects positively on the surrounding neighborhood in a sense. It's a touristy area that's often quite loud, and I daresay this hotel serves as a good escape from the hustle and bustle of the area it exists within.

The staff is very friendly, whether it's the valet people outside the front door (even if I didn't use the valet service, as I didn't rent a car), the people at the front desk in the lobby, or the housekeeping staff.

The room itself even made a nice first impression, as I walked in to find a hallway of sorts, though this is kind of where things start to feel kind of lopsided in a sense. The hallway leading to where you'd sleep or access the bathroom just seems like a tremendous waste of space. While I assume this hallway exists to create a buffer area of sorts so you're not dealing with any of the noise from the hallway outside the room, it makes it very hard to hear when housekeeping or someone else is knocking on your door.

You'd also expect the usable area of the room to be much larger, but the room itself is really nothing remarkable in terms of size, and the manner in which it's arranged leaves something to be desired.

Good luck accessing a useful outlet in your room. I had two outlets in plain view right inside the door to my room, but there's no reason I'd ever use those due to their distance from anywhere you can relax in the room. Once you're in the sleeping area of your room, you'll find yourself having to look behind curtains or even your bed to locate outlets that may already be in use due to lamps or the TV or whatever. If the rooms can't be arranged to ensure access to outlets, then I'd suggest either attaching surge protectors to furniture or furnishing the rooms with furniture with built-in outlets. What good is a desk if there's only one usable outlet nearby, for example? Put a desk with some built-in outlets and USB ports in there or something!

Thankfully, I had no trouble charging my phone, as there's an alarm clock with two built-in USB ports in the room. Unfortunately, despite arriving at maybe 5 or 6 PM my first day in town, the clock was set for 2 AM or something, so I ended up having to look up instructions online to get the clock set to the appropriate time so it was even otherwise useful.

Still on the subject of outlets, I was thankfully able to access two outlets behind my bed but only because the mattress wouldn't slide all the way up against the wall and was gradually slipping further and further off of the box spring throughout the stay. The manner in which the headboard was attached seemed to prevent the mattress and box spring from ever fully aligning, but at least I had access to two outlets.

The lighting in the room is similarly frustrating. There's a light switch right inside the door but not at the other end of the hallway, so relying on the light right as you enter the room requires you to go back to the door to turn it off. Kind of an odd design when you're doing this in the dark. The rest of the lighting in the sleeping area consisted of lamps with switches of varying designs on the lamps themselves, rather than being conveniently controlled by switches or by touch. Kind of irritating and inconsistent. The bathroom light is controlled with a wall switch, though.

I assume that this next part may vary, but there was some built-in amenity fee that entitled me to two bottles of water and $15 in other drinks and snacks from the lobby market. If this is built into your nightly fee, then not getting these items won't save you any money, so it only makes sense to take advantage of it. This wasn't overly problematic for me at first, as I was told I could just tell the person at the front desk my room number while taking the items, but I was eventually directed to a self-checkout kiosk that's not very user-friendly, doesn't very accurately reflect the available stock, and isn't great from a visibility standpoint if you've got vision problems (especially due to the color scheme and small text size).

There's a fridge in the room for storing drinks. I'll never understand why hotels insist on putting these fridges on the floors of the rooms, especially in this case where there'd be ample room for a small stand or table. Since it's a mini fridge, the actual usable space is somewhat limited, as virtually nothing you'll put in it seems to fit the various dimensions of the fridge unless you're just lying everything down.

The TV in the room is decent but has a sleep timer implemented, as well as some sort of motion smoothing that's more visible on some channels than others. Oddly, the included remote did allow me to access a service menu on the TV, but I couldn't find a way to disable either of these features. As someone who likes to sleep with a bit of background noise, this was a bit disappointing but totally understandable.

Perhaps the most glaring issue with the room is with the heating/cooling system. When I arrived, the thermostat was set to 68 degrees, and I immediately set it to 75. I mean, if you're in San Diego, then do you really want it to be sub-70 degrees? I figured this would keep me comfortable, but there's this massive vent on the wall that was blowing cold air over roughly half of the room, including roughly half of the bed. I'd regularly wake up FREEZING, despite it supposedly being 75 degrees in the room, as this vent was just blowing cold air on me. I eventually had to push the vent slats so the air just blew against the curtains and was considerably more comfortable for it for the rest of the stay, but it's irritating that the heating/cooling system seems to run practically 24/7 regardless of what it's set to.

The bed itself was quite comfortable. Mattress alignment issue aside, I really have no issues with the bed.

The bathroom was also quite nice, though the water takes its time getting cold, and I really, really wish hotels would equip their toilets with bidets. Thankfully, the showerhead supports multiple spray styles and can double as a bidet sprayer in a pinch, even if the pressure isn't the best.

Overall, this hotel was a nice escape from the area immediately outside. It'd be nice if the rooms felt more modern with more access to outlets and more convenient lighting...

While San Diego is just as far from us as Los Angeles is, my husband prefers staying in San Diego rather than LA. So when I had a free anniversary night via my IHG account, we decided a quick staycation in SD was the way to go. Granted, we could have chosen any locale with awards availability, but San Diego won out. I called in advance to let Hotel Indigo know that we were bringing our dog, Suki and was informed that their pet fee was what I expected. It used to be free but I get that hotels need to charge a cleaning fee these days. We had a great experience in San Diego with Suki so we were curious to see what the differences would be at this hotel.

We decided to drive down after breakfast. I did a quick packing for an overnight stay and made sure to pack Suki's things as well. My husband was in charge of his bag. We had previously discussed bringing snacks but ended up not doing that. We arrived at the hotel around 1 pm and had valet park the car. The overnight parking at Hotel Indigo is $59 (with in & out privileges). You can opt to park elsewhere overnight but this was downtown SD near Petco Park so I felt more secure parking it in the underground structure of the hotel. They do not offer EV charging at Hotel Indigo but I hope they offer it in the future.

We checked in at the front desk and was greeted warmly. As an IHG cardholder, I have some elite status so they upgraded our standard king room to a corner king room with a view of Petco Park. We also got free WiFi access and free drink vouchers usable at the rooftop restaurant/bar Borrego. Not only did we get to check in early, we also requested late check-out so we literally were on property for 24 hours! Win! Our room was pet friendly with LVP flooring and two sweet floor to ceiling windows. Suki really enjoyed viewing out of the windows. We asked the front desk if they could bring her a dog bed and they brought 2! They also brought bowls for her but since we brought our own, we refused those. We ended up putting the two dog beds together to make an XL bed for her which she sprawled herself over (see photo). The shower had excellent water pressure and hot water. We noticed that the bottled water in the room was a $5 charge but we didn't touch those bottles. We found a filtered water dispenser in the Fitness center on the first floor so we refilled our water bottles there. They have one Peloton bike in the Fitness center, along with an elliptical machine, two treadmills, and weights. Our room at a really cute Frigidaire mini fridge which was perfect for my husband's iced tea. We did not use the K-Cup machine since we opted to get coffee around the corner.

The king sized bed was soft and almost too soft according to my husband. We had requested extra pillows which was brought up by housekeeping but they were too firm for me. I sleep on my back and need soft semi-flat pillows or they aggravate my neck. I did not enjoy any of the pillows which is my only complaint about this room. We liked the room layout which included an extra hallway leading to the door. We were worried about being close to the elevators but we didn't hear them at all. There was some street noise overnight but for the most part, the room was fairly quiet. Suki really enjoyed herself, as did we. There is a restaurant and grab & go on the first floor as well but we didn't partake in that. There are many restaurants that were close by which we walked to by foot. This hotel is walkable to the Gaslamp district and we actually like that it's a few blocks away versus being in the center of the Gaslamp. It's also a block away from Petco Park. There is a grocery store a few blocks away and 2 CVS stores in case you need extra supplies. We really liked the location of this hotel and would stay here again in the future. Hotel staff was really friendly and went out of their way to make us feel like esteemed guests. Upon check out, we were billed for the pet fee, parking, and the charges from the rooftop bar. No surprises there. Thanks for the wonderful stay Hotel Indigo....

I’ve also attached a picture of my reservation( from Bringfido) and one from IGH itself. If I could give a negative points if Google allowed. I would not recommend this establishment at all. We checked in late around 10pm because we were driving from Lake Tahoe to San Diego and it was a very long road trip for us. From the moment we checked in the front desk receptionist( Gloria) was giving us an attitude, probably because she thought we couldn’t speak back. So, we had booked this hotel through bringfido.com( its a great website to find dog friendly places) and I had booked this hotel under my moms name, so she went to check in and Gloria was the front desk receptionist who was assisting us( when my mom showed the confirmation number she proceeded saying it’s just the reservation and you haven’t paid for it and then I told her that when booking the reservation we paid had already put our info( all the bank details) and then she said she’ll need to charge us again along with the $70 fee which she mentioned was just the deposit and is going to be refunded once we check out that’s fine then she proceed on saying there is a $32.80 for amenities fee on top of that. And when I had made the reservation we were already charged the amenity fee along with the taxes and fees. When I tried explaining her that she said no it’s an additional fee charged by the hotel for 2 bottles of water, 2cups of coffee and the something else too which I forgot) and I told her it was never mentioned in the site that there’s going to be additional fee for the amenities. And I showed her that we were already charged $62 total just for the hotel taxes and fees and she said ohh no it’s just the taxes and I asked her why is the tax $62 and she proceeded on saying no man you have to pay the amenities fee everyone pays for it. Just rude( instead of being sure and giving the client the time to explain) she just went on saying yeah you’ll need to pay that and when I said okay then if it’s going to be an additional fee then I’ll just won’t stay here can you give the money back then she said if you read under theres a cancellation fee and you’ll still need to pay even if you decide not to stay okay so didn’t have any options other than staying there and meanwhile line was formed behind me and then she said I’ll talk with my manager and will let you know tomorrow about this. Okay she ruined the whole mood and then the whole night i was looking on their site( IHG.com, booking.com) and there I saw that they did mention about the amenities fee but it was not added on the taxes and fees like mine was. So the next day when I was checking out Gloria showed me the whole paper on the website where it says additional fee but she forgot the part why mine taxes and fees more than the other ones and she said see it still applies then later I showed her that I also had done my research and showed her from the IGH site where the taxes and fees was only $32 and mine was $61.13 because the amenities fees was already included in it) and then she was like yeah you don’t have to pay then, she didn’t say sorry or anything just tired to prove that I was wrong. Never seen such a rude customer service on the front desk serving customers. Then I told her if I was charged the amenities fee why haven’t received the things) later she proceeds on saying yeah you can grab it yourself. Overall we stayed here because of our dog but never again( would rather choose Kimpton hotel over this one or maybe even Airbnb) again save yourself from going to such a establishment where they try to rip you off and also if you want to...