We decided to stay here over the Easter break and having read reviews for both the Holiday Inn and Ramada Jarvis , we settled for Holiday Inn.
Check in was a slow process and am not sure if they have a staff shortage as was only one person behind the counter and we saw no attempts by her to try and call for someone else to help out.
We were given a first floor standard room (we had booked a standard room) and when we entered the room , we got this funny whistling noise as already described by someone in an earlier review. I noticed that the main double glazing window was left open and so the noise was as a result of the wind trapped in the secondary glazing and main external window. The external window was so old and jammed and I nearly cut myself trying to close it - seems the windows have not been repaired for a while let alone replaced.
The room was clean and bathroom looked like it had not been renovated but was clean. We noticed the bathroom really steamed up after a shower and as such no extractor fans while there is a note to keep the bathroom door close to avoid the fire alarm to go off - so had to wait for the bathroom on 'un steam' before I could shave!!
The soaps dispensers in the bathroom were empty and not filled - luckily we brought our own soaps - I know the manager will say contact reception but we just were not in the mood to get disrupted - little did we know what we were in for....
After we settled into our room my better half went for a shower while I took a nap, after her shower the bathroom door handle came off completely basically locking her in the bathroom. She had to really bang the door to wake me up - this was not a good start especially when she was 8 moths pregnant!
we also noticed that the air-conditioning did not work properly. You had to insert you room key card to activate the temperature control and as it was warm I turned the room temperature to 16 degree and after 5 mins the whole unit turned off. Turned it back on again it turned off after 5 minutes. I tried raising the temperature control to 25 degrees and again after 5 minutes it would turn off - as it it was controlled centrally and not by room. In the end we had to open the windows.
We later complained at the reception when we popped down and again had to wait a while before someone could see us. Initially the lady behind the reception said she would get maintenance to sort the problems out in the room as she had a look of surprise when I explained about the aircon. No sooner had she said this and I turned round, she changed her mind and asked me if we would be happy to move rooms instead and I did say maybe we would as opposed to have workmen in our room I what was supposed to be a short break in Brighton!
The new room allocated to us was 5 doors away in the same floor and , the layout of this room was similar with suttle changes like it had just one chair while the other room had 2 chair sofas which were more comfortable. The lightening in the bathroom was very dim and some mould could be seen too. The aircon again was not working, it kept turning off every 5 mins irrespective of the temperature set and we resorted to opening the window as calling the reception and then having some person knock on our door was not what we had in mind for a peaceful stay.
We had dinner at main restaurant behind the main reception at the ground floor and dinner was buffet style and we were thoroughly disappointed that despite calling the restaurant earlier and being assured there was a vegetarian choice there was hardly potatoes and salad for us vegetarians. To make matters worse none of the food was labelled and my wife took a salad which had pork before she suspected and asked a waiter who confirmed - this was rather disappointing especially in a place where they charge £5 for a bottle of drinking water!
Breakfast was modest and selection was not amazing but what you would expect. That evening i.e on our second day, we had barely unpacked in our new room less than 24 hours ago previous day and approx 5:30 PM, we began to hear loud music coming from somewhere. Initially we turned the TV down but noise kept coming and became louder and we could feel the vibrations from the floor of the room.
Upon contacting the reception and asking to speak to guest relations , the lady apologised and told us the reason we were given the first floor was because my wife was pregnant and I argued what difference that made as we used the lift anyway irrespective of which floor we would have been - duh?
When we came down to the reception to make a formal complaint - again a long wait before someone could see to us and when complaining that this stay of ours was turning out to be some joke , we were Yes - yet again we offered to change rooms to a different floor and yes for the 3rd time in 2 days - we packed again! This was getting tiring and more like a camp as opposed to a break!
The new room we were given as an executive room - we were struggling to notice what was so executive about it and as clearly pointed out by an earlier review - it included bath robes (£30 if you wished to keep them) , 1 kitkat and a small orange drink!
I guess this is what the hotel felt was adequate to 'compensate' us for changing rooms 3 times and my wife being heavily pregnant! . Funny enough in the executive room the aircon worked fine and never kept turning off but the main external windown would not close and so we kept hearing the whistling sound throughout the night - so Mr manager, when reading this review please note that its not only seafront rooms but 3 of the rooms we used had wondows which could hardly shut - this surely is a security issue as well?
The car park as mentioned by many is so small with boxes for each car that would make it impossible to open the door with a car next t it - not sure why the hotel is not addressing this and re-drawing the allocated spaces as just not practical. all the large spaces in the car park are reserved for residents who stay above the hotel so there you go!

Booked a two night stay for my partners 30th birthday,we love brighton and normally stay at best western in hove as had never had a bad stay there and parking is free which is a big bonus...but as we came by train this time I took a chance and booked here and very glad I did.
Check-in was a breeze and a nice bonus was when we found out we was upgraded to a sea view room at no extra cost
The room had a nice king size bed was very clean and had a nice balcony overlooking the seafront
We found the staff friendly and polite from hello from the cleaners to polite service in the bar
Breakfast was fantastic nice range of food and it set you up for most of the day
overall decor was very good as had recently been refurbished
To us we felt very relaxed there and helped in making my partner's birthday down in Brighton even more enjoyable.
It's a great location for town center concert hall and pier . would we stay again ... in one word


YES

MARTIN AND VICKY

Upon arriving at the hotel everything was great. We were checked in quickly, the staff were great. We decided to upgrade are room and on first impressions were very impressed!
The problems started when we arrived back at our room after going out. The room was freezing! and the heating did not work at all. It was in fact blowing cold air . Upon phoning reception they sent someone up who 'fixed' the problem, in fact it made it worse. I have never been in a hotel room so cold. The windows were very poorly insulated. When the wind blew the curtains moved dramatically!
We phoned again and this time we were sent a heater - which was useless. By this time it was two in the morning. Two more calls to reception they sent us extra blankets, even though the room was still so cold!!
We had such a terrible nights sleep and left feeling shattered, which is a shame as everything else was excellent. The service, the room and the breakfast in particular.
In the morning we decided to complain, however they were so busy on reception we decided to email when we got home - which we did .No-one even bothered to reply to us, so it seems the company is not very bothered if people have bad experiences!

My partner and I have recently returned from a weekend stay at the Holiday Inn. We shopped around for a reasonably priced hotel and checked out Tripadvisor, which put us off booking some of the more central hotels such as the Queens and the Royal Albion.

First impressions were fairly good. Check in was efficient and we were very pleased with our room which was large and nicely decorated. We were however rather disappointed to find that the orange juice and chocolates included in the room rate consisted of a kitkat (yes, a kitkat, albeit a large one) and one, yes one tiny can of orange juice between two of us. Several items were also missing from the mini bar which concerned us as we didn't want to be charged for items we hadn't used. On our way out we politely mentioned these minor problems but the receptionist was rather dismissive and did nothing to rectify the problem.

We had a lovely dinner out in Brighton and returned for a hot bath to warm up as it was a cold and rather windy night. The bathroom was a good size but it was not clear whether it had been included in the refurbishment.

We settled down to watch a little tv before bed and noticed how loud the wind was as we had to turn up the volume. We weren't too worried until we tried to get to sleep. The wind was howling and whistling so loudly it kept us awake for hours. I live next to a railway line so am used to sleeping through noise but this was something else. After failing to sleep my partner took a look out of the window and was surprised to see that while windy, no gale was blowing outside. It was then we realised that there was a gap in the outside window where it hadn't been sealed properly letting in freezing cold air. This was being trapped between the window and the sheet of double glazing inside causing the alarming whistling sound and the rattling as the double glazing shook in the wind. The only way to reduce the noise was to sleep with the double glazing open, which let in the freezing cold air. We tried turning up the heating but it was still cold. We did eventually manage to get to sleep.

No doubt when the manager reads this review he will say we should have contacted reception but to be honest we were shattered, everything was unpacked and we were leaving the following day so we didn't really want to move in the middle of the night (assuming that option was offered).

In summary the Holiday Inn is in a reasonable location and has clean, above average sized rooms. It is however let down by little details and a poor quality refurbishment.