Holiday Inn Express & Suites Santa Clara by IHG — Hotel in Santa Clara

I have stayed at this hotel three times over the last six months or so. I have been consistently disappointed. \All three times I booked well in advance and I have Priority Club Gold status,. Still, they stuck me in handicap rooms on the ground level all three times. Normally I don't really mind handicap rooms, but these ones face the street so you are trying to sleep about 9 feet from roaring traffic, and the windows in the rooms are FAR from soundproof. Besides that, the heater/airco units have the "fan only" mode disabled, so you can't even try to drown out the highway noise. I literally did not sleep one minute the first night on my most recent stay, and while they did move me to a different room for the second night, the new room was still a handicap room. By the way, I am not handicapped. At least not physically! I asked why I always get stuck in a handicap room while my coworkers (none of whom have status) always get normal rooms... nobody at the front desk could give me any explanation. My other complaint about the handicap rooms is that there is literally no counter or vanity in the bathrooms. The sink is stuck to the wall, and the only place you have to put your toothbrush, shave kit, etc is on the top of the toilet tank. Not cool. The beds were comfortable and the sheets were clean. The rooms were reasonably clean, with fairly recent carpets, but the hotel is far from new. In fact there is currently (as of early Feb/13) construction in the lobby as they are remodeling the street facing entry way which is currently blocked off with yellow tape, etc. The breakfast is your standard HIE selection of yogurts, juices, and a pancake maker. No bananas. Fortunately there is a Denny's right across the street with real food. There doesn't seem to be a ton of parking, but I have never had trouble finding a spot at this hotel, and access is easy right off of El Camino. The front desk staff are generally friendly, and I'm sure it's probably not their fault I had such bad experiences... In spite of the convenient location, I am sorry to say that after giving them three chances to get it right, I won't be back to this hotel. I think I'll try the HI just a few blocks up El Camino next time in spite of it's lower ratings online. Hope this review is...

Staff was friendly & very helpful, room was clean, nice hot breakfasts...but:

(1) For a first time visitor, it was not obvious where the main entrance was located (i.e., in the back of the hotel)...so we drove right by it. SUGGESTION: Add signage on the main entrance to indicate it's the main entrance.

(2) It should be made clear that many of the rooms have windows right off of El Camino Real, a major road, which may have road noise...noise which was not too much of a problem at night when traffic died down.

(3) For those that don't have a rental car, there should information on the web page and a printed sheet at the front desk which lists all of the different ways to get to the San Jose airport (and associated estimated costs).

(4) TVs in the workout room were not working.

(5) There is an elevator, but not all rooms on the second floor were accessible by the elevator (i.e., some rooms on the 2nd floor required walking up 10 stairs to access). This should be make clear when reserving rooms...to handle access to guests with limited mobility, and/or guests with lots of luggage. In our case, we had to change our room reservation because of this issue (i.e., from a room with a king size bed on the second floor which required going up 10 steps...to a room with a queen size bed on the first floor).

(6) We would have liked to have had two bar soaps in the room, not just one: one for the sink, and one for the shower.

(7) Spare toilet paper was not refilled daily...so we had to ask the front desk for more....twice.

(8) For those guests who rent cars, make it clear (e.g., on the web page) that there aren't a lot of gas stations nearby...and, if appropriate, guests should check with the front desk to determine where the closest gas stations are BEFORE returning a rental car. In our case, we just assumed (our mistake) that there would be lots of gas stations nearby, didn't ask the front desk where gas stations were located. This mistake almost resulted in our not being able to return our rental car on time.

(9) There is a sign at the exit leaving the hotel which says "Left Turn Only", a sign which makes no sense since you are exiting onto a two way street. If the intent of the sign is to say "Left turn to El Camino Real," then change that...

We arrived about 6 pm on a Friday evening and when we walked into the lobby nobody was at the front desk to greet us. Guests in the lobby said the front desk representative would be back in a few minutes. We wanted to use the lobby restrooms while we waited, but were not able to because they could only be accessed with a combination code.

Once the desk representative returned, she assigned us a room on the second floor and we moved our belongings up to the room only to find it had not been serviced by housekeeping. The bed was unmade, dirty towels were still hanging from hooks on the mirror in front of the bed.

We were assigned another room on the 1st floor which is not normally where we like to be, but supposedly what was available.

The hotel and the rooms look like they have been through a remodeling recently. The exterior and interior of the hotel is stylish and pretty fresh in its furnishings. However, we were very disappointed in the beds. The hotel site says the bed in our room was a queen bed, but we sleep on a queen at home and the hotel bed was definitely smaller than our own bed. The mattress cover had a tag that said “full size”, but the mattress had a tag that said “queen”. We’ve slept on queen beds at other Holiday Inns and the ones at this hotel definitely were smaller.

Lastly, our room did not get housekeeping service on the second day of our stay even though the housekeepers were right outside our rooms when we left in the morning.

The hotel representative did award us 1500 IHG rewards points for our inconveniences, but I would have trouble recommending this hotel, unless you...