If time travel is your thing, this is the place. Everything, from the outside of the hotel to staff uniforms and the strange radio contraption in the room (difficult to describe, has to be seen...), belongs in the early 80s. The room decor is fusty, the bathrooms could do with having everything ripped out and replaced. Breakfast was ok-ish.
The location is also not great - for Sarajevo standards the hotel is quite far from the centre and the Old Town (not great if you're there for sightseeing).
The staff were nice enough, no comments there.

I guess it is almost impossible to write an objective review about any hotel, or any other place in Bosnia, since one's review is linked to his or her sympathy to Bosnia and its recent tragedy. Given the current economic difficulties and tragic recent history, I tended to tolerate and sympathize with most shortcomings of hotels, restaurants, buses, etc.. in Bosnia. Holiday Inn Sarajevo was no exception.

Since I organized a business trip to Sarajevo first time on June 2007, I had the urge to stay at an international chain hotel, and since I am a Priority Club Gold member, my first choice was Holiday Inn. The rooms were large, comfortable, a renovation was however necessary. In case we left the windows open for the day, we were met with thousands of flies in the evening. The housekeeping kept showering the rooms with insecticides, but the poison did not prevent the small flying monsters from returning every evening. Since the A/C was either not working or simply not there (I do not remember exactly), it was impossible to keep the windows closed during summer heat, and we kept having hundreds of flies in the room.

During my second stay at Holiday Inn on December 2008, some things seemed to have improved. Breakfast was much better, and the staff at the reception seemed to be more attentive and friendly.

My last third and last stay here was on December 2009 for only one night, so I did not have much opportunity to observe any changes for the better of for the worst.

I can simply suggest to stay at Holiday Inn Sarajevo in case you do not have any personal connections at other Sarajevo Hotels. Despite the mediocre quality of Holiday Inn, you can at least rest assured of a certain level of comfort, service, and cleanliness.

We stayed only one night in this hotel for recreation. The rooms are dated and old fashioned. The air co of our first room did not work. De bath was full of mold. So we complained and got another room. This was clean, but also de air co did not work. The old TV had only 28 locations while there were 58 channels available in the documentation. The hotel people were very helpful but we did not complain anymore while is was for one night. The hotel is in a good location and by tram you are in a few minutes in the centre of the town.

The rooms are without any air con! It is so stuffy that we have to leave the windows open whole night. According to the staff, they cannot do anything since the company do not have any money for the hotel maintenance. They should remove the 5 stars display outside the hotel.

We stayed here for 2 nights.