Hotel Holiday Inn Express di Carmel

Pretty standard Holiday Inn with easy on/off the highway. The rooms are standard for a Holiday Inn and clean. The rooms were quiet and the bed pretty comfortable. I feel this may be an updated hotel as the floor seemed a little creaky at times. Our room was equipped with a small refrigerator, a microwave, and a single-serve coffee maker with pretty standard coffee. The front desk staff was very nice, check-in was easy and very quick. The included breakfast was pretty average - cereal, scrambled eggs, crispy bacon, biscuits and gravy, make-as-you-go pancakes, yogurt, coffee, juice, milk.

We stayed here just this past weekend (Feb 17-28, 2023) This was the worst hotel experience our family has had with any property in over 20 years. While the staff were very friendly and I think they wanted to help, they did not seem to have the ability to actually do anything to improve our stay. The problems started as soon as we got into our room.  We found the hide-a-bed broken.  When unfolding the bed it obviously had something wrong as it would not fully extend from the sofa. After some effort the mattress came out and unfolded but the head of the bed was about 6 inches lower than the foot. When we informed the front desk they made a note but did not offer any other remediation, assistance or suggestions.  Second, and very minor but still annoying, was the lack of pancakes at breakfast.  There was a large sign promoting hot fresh pancakes but none of the items for pancakes were available. Only one stairwell was open and there was no indication that the other stairs were closed except for a note on the stairwell door that was unreadable until you were already at the door. However, the very worst part and the reason we will not recommend to others nor plan a stay at another Holiday Inn Express ourselves was the noise that continued without stop all night long.  The noise was not from a guest but was from the music being played in the lobby.  It was loud enough in our room on the second floor that we were unable to sleep more than a couple broken interrupted hours the entire night.  It sounded like someone was playing heavy bass and drum music all night long; like there was a dance party going on.  When we contacted the front desk about the noise the staff was very nice but unable to do anything to alleviate the situation as the volume controls were behind a locked door that he did not have a way to access. For the inability to sleep if i could rate the stay as zero stars i would.  For all the problems, our room should have been free!! Nice staff, but a terrible hotel if you want to relax/sleep!!!!