Holiday Inn Express & Suites Emporia

Clean, friendly, amazing bed, lots of charging locations in our suite, convenient. Only minor negative was the large kinda sunken rain drain in the middle of the parking lot. Made loading up and moving our luggage cart challenging. Put some blocks and plants around it so folks don’t park there. Went to dinner and parked in a different spot on our return. But overall a fab stay.

I was very disappointed with the hospitality of this hotel, I’ve stayed in many holiday inn express rooms and usually they are great. My family and I were driving to Florida from Massachusetts on our first long road trip. I booked a queen suite with 2 queen beds and a sleeper sofa to accommodate my family the first night after driving 12 hours. I booked months in advance. I got a phone call from the hotel while on our way there around noon time on the day of check in. They called to tell me they had a flood THE WEEK BEFORE and didn’t have the room available that we booked. They offered us either a regular queen room or a king suite but nothing else. Neither of those options worked for our sleeping arrangements and no other solution was offered. They suggested going to the next holiday inn express to get a suite but could not give us a room there at the same price. We would have to pay much more there. They would not work with us to make this right and we were already 8 hours into our trip and headed there. Finally I just decided I’ll asked if we could get the queen room with a roll away bed. They agreed but I had to ask for a discount and only received $20 off for the inconvenience. We arrived and checked in, when getting to our room with all our bags it turns out it was the king suite with no roll away bed which definitely would not fit our family. I went back down to the desk and the gentleman had given us the wrong room keys. We were exhausted after a 12 hour drive so this was all very upsetting. We got our correct keys and went to our room. The room reeked of cigarettes and had burns on the carpet. Also the carpet had a large wet stain on it. The roll away bed was there but no bedding provided for it. Luckily my son had packed sheets and a pillow in the car so we just got those. Now I understand that the flooding was in no way their fault and very unfortunate but they still have a responsibility as a business to accommodate their guests weather it be comping the room or working with another hotel to make it right. None of this was done. Also why wait until we are almost checking in to call and inform us of the situation if the flooding damage happened the week before?! It was a very stressful and frustrating way to start our road trip.

Our family stopped on our way back to Florida and we had a wonderful stay. The hotel was right off the exit and had everything that we needed. The kids enjoyed the indoor pool. The guest service agent was very friendly and accommodated our last minute request for a crib. I highly recommend this hotel as we will definitely be stopping again as we travel back and forth from NJ to Daytona Beach, FL.