Holiday Inn Express Baton Rouge Downtown

The hotel was closed. I didn’t find out about this until we arrived and saw the barricades along the street and the closed sign in the door. When I called the corporate phone number, I was informed that My reservation was cancelled on April 4th by the hotel. My reservation was booked over 4 months prior to arrival. Nobody from the hotel or IHG notified me of this. Reservations was kind enough to find me a hotel 8 miles away or 30 minutes drive time but which actually took us 2 hours to get to from LSU. I was also charged over $225 more per night per room. Instead of an $810 hotel bill (for a 2 night sat with 2 rooms) my bill was 1,674!!!! More than double my original rate. The hotel chain did nothing to compensate us. Even our “included” hot breakfast buffet that was in our original hotel room rate cost $20 with tip at the new hotel. I am extremely disappointed on how this was handled.

I had contacted both the corp ofc and the hotel directly (spoke to Wanda) on 3/31/22 to confirm & edit my reservation for 4/21/22. There was no mention of any issues at that time. I was SHOCKED to arrive at an empty & shuttered hotel! Now I'm scrambling for a room near the Blues Festival. My husband is in his 80s and disabled with mobility issues so booking appropriate accommodations is always a challenge. I called Holiday Inn's 888 # and got someone I could barely hear and understand. She did get us into another IHG property and other than a few paltry points, no other compensation was given. I have tried to contact Holiday Inn on their Report an Issue webpage and, surprise, surprise, none of the links work. Obviously, they don't want to hear from their customers. I will NOT stay at another Holiday Inn property again!

We got to our room after an easy check in experience with a lovely young lady at the front desk. The room had no view at all, but that was ok. There was a dirty towel hanging on the back of the bathroom door, but a quick call and that was removed. The room, however, was unbearably hot. We tried to adjust the thermostat before we left for the evening, but when we came back it was very hot. I called down to the front desk and they said they would put us in another room. No problems. We were happy. Then came morning and the breakfast. It was horrible. The sign said biscuits and gravy. There was neither. There was a pancake machine that wasn't operational. No milk in the cooler. I chose the hotel based on the advertisement of free breakfast. So we still had to leave and get breakfast elsewhere because of the lack of at the hotel.

We enjoyed our stay here. The rooms were nice and clean. They are currently renovating but I saw nothing that made the trip less enjoyable but one of the elevators did break while we stayed here. Skip the breakfast, it’s not worth it. They don’t have enough help - only one cook and one waitress. The wait for food sent a lot of people away. Breakfast is no longer a buffet, you have to pay extra to eat. They do have breakfast cards but if you don’t have one for that exact day you will pay for the food. It’s pretty cheap but you can find better elsewhere.