InterContinental Houston, an IHG Hotel

Where to start with this hotel...from the outside it seems pretty great. The valet service that greets you is incredibly helpful and friendly, truly a highlight of my stay. If I were to give a rating purely base on the valet and shuttle interactions I had, this hotel would earn 5 stars easily. However, the rest of my experience was a mixed bag at best. Let's start with the good parts, though. Lobby - The bar staff was nice, and the lobby has plenty of comfortable furniture to lounge on. They also stocked complimentary hot chocolate on a near-daily basis, which was quite delicious. However, it was very strange that on the day after Thanksgiving, they had already put up Christmas decorations, even though that holiday was still a month away. It made the overall atmosphere a bit off-putting, to say the least. Housekeeping - This was probably the biggest disappointment of my entire stay. While the housekeeping staff did successfully take care of most of the basics when cleaning the room, there were a few peculiar and consistent misses that I noticed repeatedly. For some reason, every day the housekeeping staff would touch, pick up, and move all of my toiletries on the bathroom counter, but for no discernible reason. You would think they were doing so in order to clean the counter, but the space they cleared on the counter was never cleaned. Each time they would leave behind dried rings of toothpaste water which came up easily with a wet washcloth, evidence that they hadn't even wiped down the counter. So why were they touching and moving all of my belongings? Additionally, some days they would fail to replace some of the toiletry supplies, such as the cotton swabs. Worst of all, however, they kept taking all of my dirty washcloths without replacing them with clean ones! During my entire ten night stay, I only got a clean supply of washcloths once, despite housekeeping cleaning my room every single day. They didn't even leave me the dirty ones to reuse; they apparently felt it was fine that the room would just have fewer or no washcloths altogether. Front Desk - The front desk staff was a mixed bag as well. When I tried to call them about the lack of washcloths when I discovered it at 10:30 pm as I was trying to take a shower and go to bed, they promised to send up clean ones for me immediately. After waiting in my room for an hour, nobody showed. So, I called the front desk again, and they acted like they didn't even know I had an outstanding request! I finally got my clean washcloths on the second try and was able to take my shower after midnight, far later than I'd planned. To make matters worse, they clearly didn't address the issue with housekeeping. I carefully laid out my stack of clean washcloths on the counter that night, and the next morning the housekeepers took all of them and left me with no washcloths AGAIN! Thus continued the issue for many more days without correction, despite my having raised the issue with the front desk multiple times. I had another issue dealing with the front desk when I needed to extend my reservation by a few days. This happened twice, and on both occasions the staff neglected to give me any information about the costs of extending my stay. They happily took my credit card and charged me for an additional 8 days, but they didn't bother to give me any information on the costs until I received the bill in an email after I'd already checked out. The one good thing I can say about the front desk staff is that when a family member in another room received a package, they were nice enough to tell me when we spoke so that I could let my relative know it was waiting for them. Overall, this hotel positions itself as a four-star property, but it only delivers a two-and-a-half star experience instead. The service is wildly inconsistent, and even attempts to report issues went uncorrected. That makes the value of a stay here an incredibly poor proposition, and I'm going to think long and hard before I make that choice again.

My son and I came to Houston to see The Cleveland Browns game. We just had a wonderful 2 night stay. This was one of the best stays I have had in a long time !!! The entire staff knocked it out of the ball park ! From the valet ,the front desk and Andrea who took care of our room !! Everyone was so kind and helpful. Thank You so much for a great experience I would highly recommend this hotel for business or pleasure