Hotel Review: Holiday Inn at Newark International Airport, NJ

This hotel Holiday Inn is near to Newark International Airport. It is only 2 to 3 miles of Newark International Airport. Except this there is nothing special about this hotel. I stayed here for four nights during this Independence holiday. I have mixed experience about this hotel.

Rooms - Rooms are well decorated and you will almost everything for a usual hotel room, except refrigerator and microwave. I was here with my mom and baby. Find it very difficult to stay here without refrigerator and microwave. I will surely recommend this place for those people who want to stay for a night and don't have baby. There is only one microwave at the first floor in whole hotel of 10 storied. I guess they have more than 500 hundreds of rooms. The hotel cost was $99 per night. Don't you think the room should have a refrigerator and microwave within that price range? During booking this hotel I was in assumption that Holiday Inn will be having those two things for any room. Later when I called they told once you reach here you can talk with manager he can arrange something for you. Unfortunately after talking to manager a lot he could not able to manager those two things for me. Later I asked them if they have any room with those facilities with higher price. I surprised to know that they don't have that at all. Each time I need to warm my baby's milk I went down from 8^th floor and used the common microwave. Room Air Conditioner was an old one and you can not fix a temperature on that. I needed 75 F temperatures for a little baby, but could able to understand where the temperature was. I will surely recommend them to change the AC system of this hotel.

Service - I didn't find any great service here. First of all the front desk receptionist was behaving like she just wanted to do that job, she had no other interest on that. I didn't get a welcome for a single time by the service person at front desk. Each time when I asked any query they are not so prompt to help me out. I never called for any room service. So I am not sure how they are for this hotel. But when I tried to get one microwave didn't get much help from none of them. After first day stay they changed all the things of the bathroom starting from towels to soaps, but after that they didn't showed up to change anything in the bathroom. I am not sure what their policy is, but expected some clean towels and few more packets of coffee and tea.

Cleanliness - Rooms were clean, but bathroom floor was sticky. Hotel didn't change the bathroom supplies regularly.

Location - The hotel is very near to Newark International Airport. But if you go alone it will be little difficult to find the exact place. There is nothing near by this hotel. If you plan of having food outside that will be quite impossible in this case. The distance of Newark Penn station is about 5 miles. Hotel doesn't provide any shuttle to Newark Penn station. You have to take a cab for that and you won't find any cab passing by hotel. So you need to depend upon hotel to get a cab and they will arrange the same and will ask for $25 whereas if you try to get a cab by your own it will be $15 only. Hotel provides free shuttles to Newark airport.

Front Desk - I have bad experience with front desk. They are not professionals. They don't greet people. When I asked for receipt they could not able to provide the same due to computer problem. I am nit sure why they don't provide much attention to customer.

Food - The hotel has restaurant and bar at the first floor. As usual the prices are much higher than outside. The hotel also has one snacks store at the first floor. The store was not at all great. The price doesn't include any breakfast. As the price of the hotel supplied room service food were very high I always preferred to have food outside before returning to hotel.

Shuttle Service - I heard lots of objection about the hotel shuttle service to airport and needless to say it is really a bad service. Each time you want to go to airport you have to wait for more hours sometimes. Coming back to airport also very time taking process. The shuttle service is not good at all.

I had another experience about the Holiday Inn shuttle. One day when I was trying to use the shuttle to airport from hotel I am about to get in the bus, the driver blocked my way and said I will take flight crew members first. I got little surprised! Not sure what special deal the driver has with flight crew members. The driver helped all flight crew members with their luggage and when it came for common people he never stretched his helping hand to anyone. I have my baby and old mother and luggage. Again at the airport he helped all crew members to unload their luggage. I was just thinking that I will give him some tips, but surprisingly he just went back to his driver's seat once all crew members went down from the bus.

One day I waited for more than half an hour for the shuttle to go to airport and then asked front desk about the status of the shuttle. He just first tried to ignore me with a bad facial gesture and then when I again asked about the status he just told me that shuttle is coming. Before commenting that he never talked with any guys to get the status of the shuttle and actually shuttle came after 15 mints since when he said that shuttle is coming.

I guess this hotel is only running due to the flight crews and pilots of Newark International Airport. So they already have gratitude for them, but not for common people. As a person and paying the same as others I don't expect that from any brand hotel. Overall I will give 4 out of 10 for this hotel. I will recommend this for people who want to stay for overnight and close to airport. And please be prepare well enough to catch your flight on time and don't depend on hotel shuttle. You may want to use taxi rather than hotel shuttle.

Billing Issues - I have booked this hotel through Orbitz. When you book anything through Orbitz you have to pay full amount in advance. Once I reached the hotel I showed the reservation print out and the front desk representative allotted my room. Though they are not supposed to charge anything more on my card, I found the full amount has been charged on my card while I came back to my native place. I called their front desk to ask the clarification about this they asked me call back to their accounting department during regular business hours. Once I called the accounting department and ask for clarification they promised to give my dollar back. The person at accounting department apologized for their mistake.
Hotel Contact Information for your reference:

Holiday Inn - NEWARK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
160 FRONTAGE ROAD
NEWARK, NJ 07114
UNITED STATES
Hotel Reservations: 1 888 HOLIDAY (888 465 4329)
Hotel Front Desk: 1-973-5891000