Probably the dirtiest Holiday Inn Express room I have ever stayed in. Tub/shower floor black and sticky. Only the center of the room carpet was vacuumed, food crumbs in corners and near walls. Coffee splashes on the walls around the sink. Mirror has water marks on it. Toilet is leaking. Nice enough room, it just needs maintenance and a thorough cleaning. This is the second night in a row we have stayed at a HIE where the facility was below the standards I normally encounter with the chain. I stay in HIE hotels frequently on the west coast. Is this a Midwest problem? Canceled my HIE reservations for the rest of this trip.

Emporia is about halfway on a trip my wife and I take every couple of months. Many times we have stopped in this hotel to spend the night. Twice we have been caught in a snowstorm and dropped in to wait out the storm. Once it was 10:00 in the morning but they gave us a room for the rest of the day and night and only charged us for the one night. Everyone has always been helpful, courtious, and professional. The rooms have always been clean and the breakfast a good way to get us started the next morning. I expect we will stay there many more times in the future.

We found the hotel while passing through on a T-Giving road trip. The price was just right for our budget, and my Holiday Inn frequent-stayer membership got us a free upgrade from a room to a suite. The room had a nice firm bed and a pull-out sofa for our five year old. It also had a microwave and small fridge. There are several restaurants in the area, a Wal-Mart Supercenter, and a stand-alone Starbucks essentially across the street. Oddly enough, we only saw one gas station close in the area, but it worked for us. The breakfast was awesome for a “hotel breakfast” (doughnuts, muffins, biscuits, gravy, scrambled eggs, sausage, milk, juice, etc, etc). Not sure why this place is getting mediocre reviews otherwise, but to-each-his-own. Maybe the suites are nicer than the regular rooms, but we didn’t see any other rooms, so have nothing to judge against. There was a decent looking indoor pool on the ground floor that was full of kids during our stay, but we didn’t do any swimming, so didn’t go inside that area. Our room WAS at the end of a hallway, across from the open stairwell, and every time someone entered or exited the building from the stairwell door, the sound reverberated up the stairwell and made everything in our room shudder. We just pulled the stairwell fire door closed and all was good. Free high-speed wireless internet was "open", and we were happy not to have to dicker around with pass-keys or "one time use cards" we have seen at other hotels.

My girlfriend and I spent Sat. night in room 300 at this hotel on 11/17/07. Housekeeping knocked on the door at 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday. I informed them that we did not require service until check out. An hour later when I was down picking up a paper, a male entered the room with out knocking and surprised Carrie coming out of the shower. I brought this to managements attention and was told they "were sorry". This level of service is completely unacceptable and quite frankly, a bit frightening. We will no longer be patronizing this hotel chain and for those of you who do, make damn sure your door bar is engaged.
Troy Flora