Holiday Inn Express Mystic

Worst evening in a hotel ever?

Some of the staff were very friendly. Great location within walking distance to a ton of family activities.

One night, we got back to our room and it reeked of cigarette smoke. The receptionist said that they knew about the issue, but that they were sold out and that they could not give us a different room. After spending fifteen minutes in the lobby, the receptionist came to our room, covered her face, sprayed our room with febreze, and let us borrow a fan, but the smell did not go away. We have a one year old, so we ended up getting a room at another motel down the street. The next day, we returned and our room still reeked of smoke; the fan I had placed in the window to blow the smoke out had been removed from our room. We asked to be moved to a new room, but no rooms were ready for us to be moved into. The receptionist said a new room would be ready in 45 minutes. One hour later, I go to the desk to check on our room; I was told that the room was still being cleaned, but we would be ready in 15 minutes. The room was smaller than our first room, and a panel on the side of the bathroom mirror was broken. I had to ask at reception for the manager to contact us regarding the smoke issues; I would have thought this was a given when we needed to stay in another hotel for the night. Two hours later, no contact from the manager, so I asked the receptionist to email the manager again. An hour later, by which time my family and I had left to spend time with friends, the manager left me a voice mail. I played phone tag with the manager of the hotel for the next two days, but never directly spoke to her. The staff did not charge us for that night, which seemed a given, but I was really surprised that they didn't more proactively address any of the smoke-related issues with us. The orange juice machine, soda machine, and laundry detergent dispenser were all broken. They displayed printed-out signs stating they were out of order. While doing laundry the day before we left, I listened to two cleaners genuinely scream at each other about the length of time it was taking one of them to finish a room. Never, ever, ever, ever again.