Matthew F
Just stayed at the Holiday Inn Downtown Convention Center in St. Louis. We were there for the Billy Joel/Sting Concert- which was postponed, and resulted in our not being able to stay for the show… so the hotel sort of became the epicenter of our trip. We spent significant time there, and my review is a bit complicated. There was much to like about the hotel- but some nagging issues that, if addressed properly, could have easily turned into a 4-star review (or higher).||First, the positives: ||1) If you are coming into town for a ballgame or concert or activity in the downtown area, the hotel is well-located. Walking distance (or a short Uber ride) from Busch Stadium, The Dome at America’s Center, The Gateway Arch and other attractions, as well as several very good restaurants.||2) The staff could not have been nicer. Whether front desk or housekeeping or the on-site restaurant, everyone was polite, approachable and responsive.||3) The room was generally a very good value. My son and I had a double queen room, very spacious, with additional seating, desk, large TV, mini-fridge and microwave. A/C was very powerful and kept the room icy cold as I prefer it. Plenty of lamps and lights. There was one malfunctioning drawer that wouldn’t stay closed (in the nightstand, which was a tad annoying), and the bathroom had a couple of small but fixable issues- slow-running toilet and a shower handle that needed some extra force to operate. But overall, the room was fine.||4) The hotel has a “quiet time” policy, 10 PM until 7 AM, which they actually enforce. Important for a convention center hotel, where I am sure large groups can get fairly rowdy at times. The hotel ensures that guests who are not with these groups will not have their sleep disturbed, and that is appreciated.||5) Although we did not have time to use it, there was a decent-sized pool and fitness center. It was clean and well-maintained- and shockingly, although the pool was not closed off from the rest of the hotel, there was ZERO smell of chlorine.||Now for the “not-so-positives”:||1) The on-site restaurant. Hard to actually call it that, given that its menu has so few options. More like a bar that serves a few snacks. We went there the night we arrived, as most restaurants in the area close shockingly early (we are from NYC, where that just doesn’t happen). To their credit, they were the only game in town. And the host/server was extremely friendly. But again, so little to choose from- we ended up just ordering a burger, which was served on white bread because they had run out of actual rolls. Food was meh. But it might have been better, had the restaurant not been polluted by cigarette smoke. I know the hotel advertises that they are a non-smoking facility, but that is simply not true. The host was openly smoking, and there were several smokers congregated right outside the open door or the restaurant, and their fumes were wafting into the place and polluting it. It made the food hard to enjoy.||2) There is no airport shuttle. For a hotel of this size, and as a convention center facility to boot, this is shockingly unacceptable. This lack of service needs to be changed IMMEDIATELY. Every other chain hotel in the area offers complementary shuttle service, and this is a glaring and unacceptable omission. Taxi/Uber to Lambert Airport costs $35-50 per trip.||3) There is an inordinate amount of roadway construction going on around the hotel, and several main roads leading to the hotel are closed off entirely. Additionally, the sidewalks and crosswalks in the area are pitted with potholes and are in a dangerous state of disrepair. Easy to trip and get hurt, and not easy for car services to get to. One of our cab drivers actually just drove around the barricades and risked being ticketed just to get us to the hotel without having to divert an extra mile (I appreciated his determination, LOL). I understand that this is not the fault of the hotel, but there was no warning about this construction on their website, and it would have made a difference to us when we were deciding where to book.||4) No breakfast was offered or available. Again, most chain hotels offer at least something in this regard, and it is a big negative. ||Rectifying these issues would make a huge difference, and could easily make this hotel much more desirable. I actually feel badly about giving a three-star review, given how lovely the staff were to us. But I do try to be truthful and informative, and I hope that those in charge of managing and maintaining the Holiday Inn Downtown Convention Center will take this review into account and act upon it accordingly.||shuttle service
