Review of Holiday Inn Express & Suites Manassas, an IHG Hotel 2*

(long review. We sent this email to the general manager after our debacle of a stay) A group of us stayed with you on Saturday, August 4th and there were several problems with our stay, only one of which was resolved. 1) Upon arrival at about 2:15 we were told that check in time was 3:00. We simply asked if there was a chance our rooms were ready and got the response from Althea was a curt, “Check in is at 3. ” We completely understand what check in time means, but more often than not if the rooms are ready the front desk will allow an earlier check in time. We said we understood and began to sit in the dining room to wait out the 45 minutes. 2) When we started to open our beers, the custodian said that we weren’t allowed to drink in there because, “There are many children around. ” This seemed very odd as I have had many an adult beverage in hotels lobbies because it is private property. The youngest person in our group of 6 was 49, so we are all WELL above the drinking age. When we asked at the desk Althea told us that the general manager’s policy was no alcohol in the dining room with the added explanation that, “Too many people make a mess in there when drinking. ” We were perplexed, but didn’t push the issue. She also told us that our rooms were ready. It seemed odd to us that things had changed that quickly, but we smiled on our good fortune. And then the real problems started. 3) We had 6 people in our group and made on February 17th 2018 for 3 rooms. When Althea went to process our check in, she set us up with only 2 rooms and reiterated many times that, “The hotel was completely booked. ” This was a problem because we had a mix of genders and people that didn’t know each other in the group of 6. She happily noted that she had upgraded our rooms to suites. We told her that it wasn’t acceptable and showed her the email confirmation. I have no doubt that it was her that made the change, but after some time she noted that the reservation was changed, “Sometime that morning to 2 suites. ” I can promise you that it was us that made the changes to the reservations, but then here we were with 2 rooms with the only other option to have 2 of us get a room at a nearby hotel which was completely unacceptable. Backed into a corner, we dealt with the problem by having people who have never met in the same room. What else could we do? Please note that although tension was high with our communication with Althea we were polite and she was professional and polite back to us after our very first 2 encounters. 4) As I mentioned, we made the uncomfortable room situation work. When went to breakfast on Sunday (which was very nice) and as we were looking at the bill delivered during the night, we noticed that we were being charged a price different from the original quote. As you can see on the attached document, the total bill was to be $417.00 (471.21 after tax) for the three rooms (which works out to $157.07 per room). Our bill reflected $202.27 per room after tax which adds up to $404.54. (I have copies of these documents if you need them). Althea was polite and took about 25 minutes for her to update the charges to reduce both rooms by $40, while in the meantime telling other customers that she would have to deal with us first before she dealt with them. So in conclusion, we didn’t get the rooms that we absolutely reserved, got some strange mixed message during check in, and then we were charged for the “upgraded” rooms that we never asked for. When we checked out it took almost a half hour for our bill to be corrected.