MN
Mateusz Dominik Nesterok
Apr 30, 2026
As a loyal member of the IHG Platinum Elite and InterContinental Ambassador programs, I have stayed in countless IHG hotels worldwide. I am strict in my reviews. I often give high ratings, but just as often very low ones. The baseline for me is hygiene - the cleanliness of the room and its fixtures.
My current 4-day stay at the Holiday Inn New York City - Wall Street in room 1603 has undoubtedly been one of the worst hotel experiences of my life. I expected the standard IHG is famous for. Instead, we lived through a nightmare.
The room we received looked nothing like the pristine, renovated interiors from the photos on their website. It was claustrophobically small. The beds are not so much narrow as they are short - meant for short people.
Cleanliness in this property does not exist. Both the hallway and our room reeked of a constant, unbearable smell of mustiness, but also probably marijuana or something similar. That is why we constantly keep the window open. In my opinion, the carpet is dirty, as are the walls and lampshades. The furniture is heavily worn, and so are the doors.
The bathroom is archaic and extremely unhygienic. Black mold was growing on the silicone by the sink, and hair from previous guests was lying in the shower drain. Thick clumps of dust are hiding right behind the illuminated mirror. The shower fixture is heavily corroded, rusted, and simply disgusting, on top of having no adjustable shower head. Even the toilet bowl had chipped enamel.
Don't count on getting any sleep here. The windows provide absolutely no insulation against street noise. Worse yet, we heard everything from the neighboring rooms (including a crying child), and in the morning, a loud rushing water sound from the pipes, resembling some tank refilling, woke us up every few minutes. Generally, it is hard to sleep here past dawn.
We arrived at the hotel late in the evening, and by 5:30 AM I was already up. That is also when I informed the hotel management in writing about the irregularities. However, I was completely ignored. Currently, we are past our 3rd night, waiting for a reaction from the IHG network after sending the information directly to them.
As of right now, no answer, no apologies, and no manager has contacted us to offer a room change. Their concept of service consisted of the housekeeping ladies superficially making the bed every day and leaving replacement towels that were so worn and threadbare they would be a better fit for a cheap roadside motel. The actual dirt was never removed from the bathroom, nor was the carpet ever cleaned.
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UPDATE 1:
Before the last night the hotel painted our shower floor with water-based interior wall paint (latex) to hide filth and rust. Under the hot water, the paint dissolved and chemically bonded to my bare feet and legs in thick chunks. When I reported this toxic exposure, the receptionist literally laughed in my face.
After I caught them red-handed with photos of the paint can and escalated to IHG Corporate, management offered an insulting, symbolic partial refund.
Their physical "solution" for our final night was absurd: they gave us a key to a second, one-bed room just so we could shower safely, forcing us to walk down the hall to sleep in our original, moldy room.
This property is a massive liability and a management disaster. IHG should revoke their franchise immediately.
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UPDATE 2:
The automated, copy-paste response from General Manager Valerie Abad-Dizon below perfectly proves my point about this hotel's disastrous management. She apologizes for "housekeeping" and wishes me a good "remainder of my stay" - completely ignoring the fact that her staff illegally painted a shower with water-based wall paint, causing physical chemical exposure. Furthermore, she clearly didn't even check my reservation, as I have already checked out and served her office with a formal pre-litigation demand letter for gross negligence. This automated template response to a severe health and safety violation is an insult.