Holiday Inn - Very Average Hotel
Written: Aug 08 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nice pool/exercise room, kids eat free
Cons: Minimal service, maintenance issues
The Bottom Line: My husband says I expect too much from a hotel, but for $155 a night, I expect something more than just any old room. This didn't do it.
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| susiee's Full Review: Holiday Inn Muskegon Harbor |
Recently we spent two nights at the Holiday Inn in Muskegon Harbor as part of a weekend getaway with our kids.
First off, this hotel was fairly easy to find using the directions provided when I made my reservation. This was a plus since last year we spent over an hour trying to find the hotel I'd booked online. It is just a few blocks off Business 31 in the downtown area.
Check-in was very simple and straightforward. I had prepaid our rooms to get a better rate, which I still felt was kind of high for the room ($155 a night for a standard room with 2 queen beds). The hotel clerk asked if I wanted to leave my credit card for charging incidentals to the room, and said she could just use the one I used to pay for the room, so the whole process took about 1 minute from walking in and receiving my key.
The lobby is large, clean and well-lit. The only restaurant is right off the lobby as well. Across from the check-in desk are two elevators. Down the hall are various conference rooms and the stairs to the parking garage.
The hotel has 8 floors, and our room was on 7. The elevators moved fairly quickly between floors.
The room itself was a pretty standard Holiday Inn hotel room. It had two queen beds (which I recently learned is not standard at hotels, many offer two double beds instead). A small nightstand with clock and lamp separated the beds. A small table with two chairs had the phone and another lamp. The tv was on a large stand and offered basic cable channels, plus 4 HBO channels, the option to pay for movies and video game play.
There was an ironing board and iron by the closet. An ice bucket and two cups were on top of the tv stand.
The bathroom was a bit on the small side. The bathroom counter had a coffee maker and cups, complimentary shampoo and lotion and bar soap. Adding our toiletries made the countertop very crowded, so I ended up packing everything back into my bag and putting it on the floor after using things. This also explains why the ice bucket and cups were on top of the tv, there really wasn't room in the bathroom for them. A blowdryer was also provided, the standard on-the-wall model. The fluoroscent light above the sink was starting to go, so the room would get dimmer and brighter periodically as the bulb warmed up. It drove me crazy.
On the table in the room were some photocopied pages of a restaurant menu. It did not have the restaurant name on it anywhere, nor the hours, but I figured it was for the one restaurant on the first floor. I looked all over for the usual little guide to the hotel that most hotels provide, listing all the services available, local attractions, etc., but all I could find were these photocopied pages, which were getting fairly worn.
The pool and exercise room were on the second floor. You need a room key to enter the pool area and exercise room.
The pool itself was a decent size, with plenty of plastic chairs around the sides. Towels were provided for swimmers. The pool itself is indoors, but there was an outdoor area accessed from the pool area with more tables and chairs for people to enjoy the outdoors. No lifeguard is on duty. Although drinks were not available in the area, I saw quite a few people drinking beverages they'd brought in from the restaurant or their rooms.
In addition to the pool, there was a hot tub. Between the pool and exercise room was a steam room.
I checked out the exercise room. It had a number of exercise bikes, which is about the only thing I ever use, that were very comfortable to use.
We had breakfast on both Saturday and Sunday morning in the hotel restaurant. The ads say kids eat free. On Saturday morning, they had a breakfast buffet for $7.95 for adults, free for kids, as well as a breakfast menu, with several nice options for the kids to choose free. The buffet had boxes of cereal (Cheerios, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes), assorted cartons of milk, fruit, small donuts, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, and French Toast sticks. A server came around as we were seated and asked if we would like orange juice or coffee. I requeste a Pepsi, which I never received, and nobody ever came around offering refills or checking on our beverages. We didn't even get glasses of water. Eventually the server came by and asked if she'd given us our bill yet, then didn't return for a few minutes with the actual bill.
On Sunday, however, they only had the Brunch buffet in the morning, no menu available to choose from. In addition to the items from the Saturday buffet, the Brunch Buffet included salad bowl, cucumbers, tomatoes and two choices of dressing, taco fixings, cottage cheese, jello and a dessert tray.
All floors except the first floor had ice machines. Unfortunately, the one on our floor didn't work. I let the front desk know the first night, but it was still not working when we checked out two days later. Soda machines were also on all the floors, but vending machines with food were only on even numbered floors. I had very bad luck all weekend with these machines. The one on my floor wouldn't take dollar bills, so I went to the next floor, and it wasn't working, so went to another floor and finally got a bottle of pop. Later my kids wanted something to eat. First one we tried wouldn't accept dollars, change only. We went to the lobby and got change. Then the machine took the money and didn't give us anything. Back to the lobby, where I was told it wasn't their responsibility, they will call the vending company in the morning. No apology, offer to reimburse me, nothing, just oh well, not our problem.
Housekeeping was not the greatest either. After returning to our room on Saturday, we found clean towels and the beds had been made. That was it. They had left the used glasses and did not provide clean ones. They hadn't vacuumed (my kids had dropped crumbs on the floor and they were still there) and the waste basket still had trash in it. I called down for clean glasses, which arrived in about 25 minutes.
My sons wanted to rent video games. We tried to set it up on the tv following the instructions, but got a message that said we had to call the front desk to order. We called the front desk, and they said we had to order through the tv. We explained that it said we had to call, and after a few minutes discussion, they said they would get it set up in a few minutes. After about 5 minutes, the screen came up with ready to go, but when we tried to select a game, it came back with the message to call the front desk. After fiddling around back and forth a bit, we finally turned everything off and tried again after 10 minutes, and got it to work. You had a choice of around 15 Super Nintendo games, and my boys were thrilled and played for two hours.
This hotel did not offer the quick checkout option that many hotels do. When it was time to leave, I waited in line to turn in my key and pay the bill.
The hotel was unexceptional, just another regular hotel. The service was not as good as I expected.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
susiee
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