Holiday Inn Express & Suites Seattle-City Center — Hotel in Seattle

My husband and I booked the King Suite with the Jacuzzi tub for 4 days and 3 nights over the New Year's holiday. We paid the extra price for the room because it was a special occasion and well, because quite frankly, I'm a bit of a bath freak and the in room jacuzzi just sealed the deal for us. We are currently on day 3 after night #2, and of course, the hotel is at almost full capacity due to New Years. Here are our thoughts so far:

Pros: -The room has a view of the space needle that you just cannot beat. -The price for a regular room is comparable to other hotels in the area. -The location is near the bus line and is within walking distance to the Seattle center (where the Space Needle is located) -There is a hot breakfast bar included. -The rooms have working climate control. -There is a weight room and a swimming pool on site. -The parking garage is secured. -The bed is very comfortable and the extra pillows were fantastic. -When we first checked in on Friday, the sink at the vanity was totally clogged. After a call to the front desk, maintenance was here in short order and got it fixed right away. While the problem itself wasn't necessarily a 'Pro', the way that it was handled was.

Cons:

-The hot water in the hotel is, right now, non-existent. Maintenance has been called, the front desk has been notified, but the hotel that is at almost max capacity is running on four water heaters for the entire building. Translation: the room that I specifically chose to share with my husband to celebrate our anniversary has a beautiful, two person jacuzzi tub that is absolutely worthless right now. It has been an hour since I tried to start running the bath. UPDATE- the hot water is back another 30 min later and management is giving us 20K points for our troubles as we are an IHG member... Unlike the sink issue, the problem itself was definitely a 'con' and the way it was handled was also very disappointing. -When maintenance showed up, the individual reeked of weed. I am all for recreational use of legal substances, but not when the individual is on a time clock. I would like to also point out that is entirely possible that this person was just working on something, somewhere that someone else was smoking and picked up the smell that way. Regardless this is a non-smoking hotel and as such, I would expect it to not smell of weed, even in Seattle. -The swimming pool itself is very small and is usually very crowded. -Parking here is a pain (as is most of Seattle). If you bring your car, expect to pay for parking ($19 a night).

Unknowns -We haven't had a chance to try the breakfast bar yet as it was very crowded this morning, but that is expected as it is the morning...

The front desk procedures need to be revamped. Guests waiting to check in, check out and to purchase food/snacks at the front desk should not have to wait 20 minutes before being acknowledged. One young female staff member was on the phone taking a reservation, offering shuttles and other services should never take precedence over guests standing in line in the lobby. None of the guests were acknowledged by her, not even a glance to acknowledge our presence. What ever happened to putting the caller on hold a moment or offer to recall them once the lobby is cleared??? Where is customer service today? Better yet, the woman standing around at the front desk who said, "Actually, I can't help you with check in, I'm in sales", maybe she should be trained to back up the front desk or at least call for assistance. Twenty minutes later, another young woman showed up, took care of the patron wanting to purchase snacks, which was fine, her is a hotel guest. I asked her if it was possible to get an early check in, I was told "there is no early check in available, check in time is 3pm, but that's never a guarantee". Granted, I arrived very early, about 11:30am, and I was told they would text me should something come available. I checked in 4 times to see if they had any rooms cleaned and ready, each time there was a brief look at the computer and I was told no. I sat in the lobby till nearly 3 pm, then I went back up for the 5th time, I asked the young woman again, this time she told the first woman to call Housekeeping to check on rooms. She had a quick conversation on the hand held radio and was told 3 rooms were available, she said told them they weren't showing. I couldn't hear anything further. To sit nearly 3.5 hours and not have anyone actually call to check the actual status is awful. I will stay at the Tacoma Holiday Inn Express in the future, they are amazing, right off the freeway exit, very friendly and communicative staff. It was a nice room, but the staff was substandard in my opinion. One couple walked out with they're bags after waiting 30 minutes, another man was told that 3pm check in was never a guarantee ... He...

As a IHG Spire member family, this was a highly disappointing experience! Every single day a new issue arose. 1.) A fire alarm and evacuation of the building due to the kitchen staff burning something occurred at 6AM. As we entered into the breakfast room following the evacuation, the kitchen staff was laughing about it. Not very funny in my opinion considering handicapped people are evacuating unnecessarily from the 6th floor and children are being woken up at such an early hour. 2.) Our door key card swipe was broken upon arrival. My husband had to go back down to the desk where they said it wasn't a key card issue. A maintenance man followed him up, checked it out, and then left for 15 minutes, and finally came back to tell us they couldn't fix it that night. We had to sit in the floor outside our room at midnight with all of our things for over 30 minutes throughout this process. This is not acceptable. Not at all. 3.) The toilet never fully flushed, not a single time. 4.) When we tried to let the front desk know of some of these issus ee found that the phone was broken. Awesome. So we had to call the reservation desk from our cell phone instead. 5.) Every single day, the hallways and elevator smelled like someone had just smoked a blunt in them. Such a strong weed smell the entire time. 6.) The breakfast room was well stocked but wow was it packed. No less than 50 people in that room whether it was 6:30AM or 9:30AM, it was always so packed and you have to wait such a long time to get something to eat. Overall, avoid this hotel. Chose another place to stay near the area for a...