Holiday Inn Express Princeton by IHG

Got a terrible deal through Hotels.com that I should have avoided and went to the Holiday Inn site. This was for the Eclipse and I got caught up in the excitement of moving locations in the last few days and expected Hotels.com to get me a reasonable rate. No one else paid as much as I did for the same hotel.

Great place and staff

Nice

Area

The convenience of the property

Nice stay!

I had reserved 2 rooms the first room was covered with dust and appeared to be under repair when I told the staff they were gracious and helpful and got me another room. I thought that was the end of my problems then my son said I should look at his room and the rooms carpet was horrible and matted with grease tar or something like that. I returned to the desk and they gave us yet another room that wreaked with the smell of cigarettes in a nonsmoking room. Needless to say we stayed but I would not recommend this hotel to anyone and I feel that I way over payed for what I received. So let’s say I’m not very happy.

They gave us another room after we realized our door didn't lock. They were so kind and helpful in any way they could.

This was my second time at this hotel, and on my first experience, it wasn't completely horrible so I decided to give it another shot. This time I had my wife with me. This hotel is very close to Toyota where I do consulting. I had a 4 night reservation. I asked for the top floor and they honored that when I arrived. When I arrived and made it to the third-floor after the door opened I was hit with a smell of what I would call sour milk, which seemed to be embedded in the carpet and made the entire hallway smell pretty bad. It continued like that all the way up until I left. When I got into my room, there was a coat of dust across the furniture appearing that that room hasn't been used in a long time or potentially, hasn't been cleaned in a long time. I noticed there were two or three stink bugs above the window and crawling around on the ceiling. The windows are not able to be opened so there must be a crack or something that allowed those bugs in. The bed was fairly comfortable, but there was a very noticeable sag in the middle of the bed, which tells me it needs to be replaced. On the second day, which was a Saturday, the wife and I spent most of the day away, and return late in the evening. I asked the front desk lady if there was any service done to the room as we were likely going to be out of towels over the weekend and I was trying to get ahead of that. She said she didn't know and gave me a full set of towels and a new roll of toilet paper. On Sunday we stayed away almost the entire day and assume since we were on our third day that the room would be serviced. We were wrong! Our trash was overflowing in the room, and the towels were still piling up in the bathroom. I dismissed it as being short staffed but my wife reported to me as she was in the room the entire day on Monday that she noticed the cleaning staff or maintenance staff appeared to be in the parking lot more than in the hotel. I have stayed at a handful of Holiday Inn and different places, and had different experiences at each. This one happened to be the worst experience of all. On Sunday night the fire alarm went off, and the hotel was evacuated as the mulch on the side of the building caught fire and started to travel up the hotel. Several police and fire showed up and put the fire out. I can honestly say that either the ownership is clueless or the management doesn't care, but it seems like customer service isn't a priority. On Sunday morning. For example I showed up for breakfast around 8:45 AM with breakfast closing at 9 AM. I was craving those excellent cinnamon rolls but the young girl who was tending the breakfast area went into the back room and stayed there until 9 AM when I was hoping there would be a refill of those cinnamon rolls. There were about another four or five people behind me just before nine that didn't even have a chance to get a cinnamon roll. I think that was just laziness on the part of the young girl taking care of it or she's being told by management to not make any of those at the last minute. Either way that is poor customer service. Based upon this experience, I will be staying at the Hampton Inn in Princeton, or going down the road to Evansville. The only reason I gave it a rating of two out of five was the young girl at the front desk was friendly and helpful.

Breakfast was good. They were out of a couple of things - pancake batter and cranberry juice. The pool was not open the last two days of our stay. Staff was very friendly and the room was comfortable.