Review of Holiday Inn & Suites Durango Downtown, an IHG Hotel 3*

Our stay here was great and we would choose this hotel again; however, despite our good experience, it is clear that the hotel lacks good management. During our check-in there were two women behind the front desk and a man who was putting out cookies. While checking us in, the one woman was interrupted by the other woman who had just taken a phone call from someone who was demanding a ride from the airport immediately and she didn't know what to do (I assume she was new). Not skipping a beat through our check-in, the woman helping us asked the man (who was eating the cookies he had just put out) if (so-and-so) was in the office. The man replied to her, "I don't know. Why don't you pick up the phone and call him. " She barely reacted, but I was appalled. Out of curiosity, I looked up who the GM was for this hotel and, sure enough, it was this man who was eating cookies in the lobby and not only being unsupportive of his staff, but flat out disrespectful in front of a customer. Throughout the rest of our stay we could tell that the front desk staff was always overwhelmed — — that seemed to be part of their culture. Although they were super friendly at all times, they seemed to be disconnected and short-staffed at all times. They moved us from one room to another (for our benefit, which was appreciated), but then didn't properly move us in their system, so we received a bill for someone else under our door the next morning. They told us to call for their shuttle at any time, so we did call for it when we wanted to use it. It wasn't available at that time. So they told us they would call us when it was ready. Forty-five minutes later we could see it out our window, so we just walked down to the lobby and asked if it was ready. Then we were told the shuttle leaves every 15 minutes and it was going to be another 10 minutes before it left again. That night I realized my son's pajamas had disappeared. I suspected they were taken by housekeeping along with the blanket on his bed. When I called down to the desk at 9:30pm, the gal got me another blanket and told me I would have to check with the desk in the morning about the pajamas. From 7am until we left around 9:30am, the desk had a constant line and we couldn't talk to anyone without waiting a long time. We ended up just leaving without the pajamas. It seemed like it would have been easy enough for the night staff to leave a note for housekeeping. The last morning we tried to have breakfast at the attached restaurant (where kids eat free), but they had had one of their servers call in sick, so there was only one server for about 30 tables. We also overheard someone say that the restaurant staff wasn't notified that the hotel was full until 9pm the night before so they were already going to be short-staffed. We waited forever while watching the one waitress and the chef run around like crazy. We ended up getting the buffet but never got our drinks and just left annoyed. All-in-all, our experience there was good and I don't mean to give anyone a negative impression of the hotel itself. We would certainly stay there again. However, based on what I saw this weekend, I would guess that there are a lot of complaints about the staff (or things like "no, we don't have any clean towels available") and that there is a lot of turnover among the staff due to the unsupportive working conditions. However, ultimately it is the GM is who responsible for everything negative we experienced. It is clear that these folks are not getting the support they need to do their jobs well and I feel bad for them.