I wish I had read some of the reviews to have AVOIDed booking this hotel — the experience was terrible & so unpleasant! This hotel seems not follow ihg standards: the shower water flow rate is forced to be very small even turned to the maximum, you can imagine how do you feel when shower to wash long hairs with tiny water stream dripping down…; as others reviewed, the swimming pool area is not well maintained and cleaned, and someone even found bedbugs in their rooms. Regarding to my unique experience here, I would like to raise serious concerns about the safety staying at this hotel! Our family was resting in our room and the kids are sleeping, then, soneone was heavily knocking the door, which , surely waken up the kids and interrupted our rest. I opened the door and suddenly a strong smoke smells come in from the hallway, and there was a staff member standing there who just knocked our room door and asking if anything is burning in our room? I checked and said no, and was also wondering where the smoke smells came from, should our family evacuate the room immediately? Is there a fire in this building? A lot of questions and also a bit scared ! The staff member did his job by knocking each room to check and eventually found the smoke source from a room due to a burning microwave! The microwave was then removed and the smoke was gone, everybody in the hallway and rooms were releaved. Though nobody was hurt in this incident, Surprisingly to all the guests with witness, the SMOkE DETECTORs in that room and the hallway were NOT ALARMing! which should sound loundly given the strong smoke smells along the whole hallway and floor! Those potential malfunction smoke detectors really put guests’ safety in great danger and voliate the building fire safety codes! With such huge concerns, I did raise it to the front desk but the manager was not there! The front desk lady was impatient but she did took the notes to escalate. I hope the manager and staff there really take this seriously by checking each smoke detector to comply with building safety codes! FOR THE SAKE OF GUESTS’ SAFTY! The hotel’s location is good as it is close to OSU, but you have many hotel options in the same area, so, as I stated at the beginning, I wish I had avoided this hotel by choosing another one due to this bad experience.

It’s a nice place, however the one problem I have is when you reserve your room the week before they take $100 from your card to hold it, but then when you get there that money doesn’t go towards your room they refund it back to you. Just keep it and put towards the damn room… so now instead of having a $300 bill on 2 rooms I now paid $500 cause they didn’t put the money towards it. The other thing is that they have you pay a parking fee as well, so not only did we have a $500 payment for 2 rooms we have to pay a parking fee as well… money hungry much!! Also my mom was gonna just pay for our parking and the guy that was helping us didn’t say anything and charged my rooms on my mom’s card which that’s frustrating. I had my card out and everything and next thing I know he’s giving me the key cards and says your set.. beyond irritated cause now I owe my mom $500. Communicate with people and talk them through. It’s not hard!!

We stayed at the hotel for quite a few days on a business trip. Our stay was generally pleasant. We arrived late evening, (our colleague arrived after midnight), checkin was very smooth, and done promptly and professionally. Checkout was equally quick and smooth as well. The 5th floor room was spacious, comfortable with all necessary amenities present. Smart TV with good range of channels, mini refrigerator, coffee maker, writing desk etc. Bed was soft and comfortable. Lighting was good, ample charging points were there with USB outlets in some areas. Breakfast was okay, with very limited variety during my stay. 6:30 to 9:30 on weekdays and 7-10 on weekends. Big enough swimming pool and a large gym - both are located at the 1st floor lobby level. Big minus is lack of onsite laundry room. There’s a provision though to use laundry facility of the Staybridge Suites right next door - 1-2 min of walk. There are 3 washers and 2 dryers available round the clock (?). No charges to use the facility, but you may buy detergent pack and softener at $3 each from the front desk. There’s a grocery on the opposite side of the road, and few dining options nearby like Denny’s, McDonald, Bob Evan’s, a Mexican place etc. Kohl’s is 5-10 min walk. Overall pleasant stay. Will consider definitely for my next stay.

Disclaimer: this is my second review. See the end for Cons. I did not receive anything from them for my second review. And decided to write it after my stay. (Short version: if you are booking through a third party, watch out for their parking fee) Pros: My 4 day stay at Holiday Inn Express was overall pleasant. Room was as expected and more. Clean, well kept for a two star hotel, felt like it was updated recently enough. No broken appliances, water was hot, and my room cleaning that I booked at the front desk did a great job keeping it tidy and restocked with fresh linens and towels. Location is great for my purpose of visit which was to go to the downtown convention center. There were a lot of different restaurants nearby within the 2-3 min drive radius of this hotel. Breakfast was always well stocked and ready. I did not utilize their pool and hot-tub, but it was very popular with families with kids. Everything considered, this is a great holiday inn to stay at. Cons: My initial review gave it a terrible review. And for a good reason. Upon arrival, I was charged a daily parking rate for my entire duration of stay. Explanation was that this is something that started last year, and should be updated on the website. I was blindsided by this, as google, and their own website listed “free parking” and “complimentary self parking as their amenities. I called corporate, and upon their examination, they declared that since I booked through a third party, I was charged this parking rate. It is definitely a little trap that third parties do to lower their rates, and I am annoyed and disappointed by that website for sure. However, I would have appreciated if Holiday Inn/IHG have listed their parking as not “free parking” on google if it comes with a *. I did appreciate how responsive they were through this whole situation, and prompt explanation I was provided with. I decided to rewrite my review as I wanted to give them a fair chance. (For those curious, I did not receive any compensation or reimbursement from them.)

Terrible experience. It started with check in. There is not enough parking for the number of rooms at the hotel so cars are double parked. When we got to check in we found out that the hotels website (not a third party provider) booked two rooms when we only requested one. They tried to charge us for both rooms and then we got the run around for over a week trying to get it corrected. Spent hours on the phone with customer service. The staff was very lackluster. People were running around the hotel with doors slamming all night and staff weren't helpful with addressing the issue. Woke up in the morning to chicken wings in the elevator, clearly staff never walk the hotel. Tried to find staff in the morning but they were not to be found. We have previously stayed at the hotel next door with a very pleasant experience.

We wake up on a beautiful rainy day. Ready to have a good day. Everything is nice. Get up. Get dressed across from the bed that we're on. We see your little red thing we walk up to it and realize oh there's bed bugs. I've been to a lot of hotels in the area and I mean a lot. Almost everyone around this place. I've never seen bed bugs but for some reason there's bed bugs here. We pay $400 for a room and it comes with bed bugs. We let the lady at the front desk know she don't care. In fact she's rude. Then we asked them. Hey are you going to pay to have all our clothes dried since we stayed here and trusted that you guys wouldn't have anything like this and you do immediate attitude so to anybody staying here. Just to let you know they have bed bugs. If you know anything about bed bugs if there's one there's more

Super comfy beds, and pillows. Clean. Affordable. We were in town for a concert, and they even offered a free shuttle to and from, the Schottenstein Center. Check in, and out was quick, and easy. Front desk was friendly. My only suggestion for improvement, would be, re-grouting the bathroom floor. It could use a refresh, but I would stay here again, for sure.

Our 2nd time to stay here during a visit to family at OSU. Great staff & comfortable room, excellent beds. Especially enjoyed the fresh ground brewed coffee at Breakfast. Staff went out of their way to care of us.

UPDATE DUE TO THE MANAGER WHO DIDNT CARE ABOUT MY ISSUES AT HOTEL: My family and I were here for a cheer competition, we checked out about 7am on Saturday. We called about 2pm the same day because I realized I forgot mine and my daughters swim suits hanging up in the bathroom, thinking i could go back and pick them up. They said they would call back to let us know and we never heard back. I called tonight(Sunday) at 7pm and the guy said he would call me back, not long later he called back claiming house keeping didn't find anything in the room. Not only do I THINK the swim suits either got taken and or thrown out in carelessness because I can't come up with any solid reason why they werent there, we switched rooms due to the bathroom in room 612 smelling strongly like marijuana, only to have room 712 smell just as strongly like marijuana. We had to tape off the vent in the bathroom with plastic as it smelled horrible and I have a cardiac child who shouldn't be around smoke. I assume the smoke was coming through the vents because once taped off we couldn't smell it anymore. This is a sad excuse for a hotel and we won't be back . Plus there was a dog barking the WHOLE night. REPLY : I guess a magic little fairy came and took the swim suit, maybe it was magic? Idk but Not slander when my swim suits are gone. Emailing a family member saying you will take legal action against me because I made an a post saying items were stolen...here is my updated response in my THOUGHT of items magically disappearing

Hotel staff was friendly and knowledgeable upon check in. The room is a nice size but there was what appeared to be dental floss and a long black hair in the middle of the bathroom floor and another black hair on the shower wall. Definitely not ours and frankly, kinda gross. The toilet seat was crooked. That is a small thing, but you have to wonder…does maintenance even try? The wall-mounted tv was also crooked. The walls are very thin. A lot of sound transfer from the next room as well as the floor above us. The location was convenient. Parking was an issue. The lot is small. The snow was not adequately cleared. Several parking spots were inaccessible and the corners were shortcutted which made navigating around them difficult.