Holiday Inn Birmingham M6 Jct7, The Sycamore

Where to start. Our stay had a string of issues, from broken facilities to a genuinely poor response to a disability request. Air con and accessibility: The air conditioning was broken in our room, and with no lift in the building I had to ask for help carrying my luggage up the stairs due to a hidden disability. I was initially told no, and only got help once I explained the disability, that shouldn't have been necessary. When we asked about the broken AC, the only offer was a small, fixed-direction desk fan, and they only had one left. The staff member dealing with this was pleasant, but it raises the obvious question: what were the other guests with broken AC supposed to do? Inconsistent communication and a pattern of moving, not fixing: A family member staying separately wasn't told about the AC fault at check-in at all, they only discovered it once they tried to use it in their room. They then had to change rooms entirely because of a broken mattress, as the hotel wouldn't replace the mattress itself, only offer a room change, and didn't proactively help arrange the move. A neighbouring guest ended up having to change rooms twice. It started to feel like management's approach was to shuffle complaining guests to different rooms rather than actually fix the underlying problems. Housekeeping refusing to engage: The same family member wasn't left a clean towel during housekeeping. They asked hotel staff, who told housekeeping to sort it, but no towel arrived. When they raised it directly with housekeeping, they were simply told housekeeping was certain they'd already left a clean towel, rather than just taking the dirty one, and housekeeping refused to even come and check the room. Despite repeated requests, no clean towel was ever brought up. Ordering food was its own ordeal: The QR code for in-room ordering wasn't working, so I went down in person, only to find the menu had recently changed and staff weren't familiar with it or how to ring it through the till. The staff themselves were friendly, but the order took a long time and had to be corrected repeatedly as their till kept glitching, it took around 15 minutes just to pay. I was then told they couldn't bring the order up to the room after all, despite the in-room menu stating room service was available. After a confusing back-and-forth, and a manager who wouldn't speak to me directly, only relaying messages through a staff member, it turned out room service carries an extra charge of around £3.75 that would normally be added via the (non-functioning) QR order, and this charge apparently doesn't exist as an option on their tills at the moment either. So it wasn't possible to pay for room service any way at all. I ended up waiting for the food and carrying it up myself. Booking and billing glitches: I booked through Expedia, so this may not affect everyone, but it's worth flagging: several other guests apparently reported being charged multiple times the correct amount for their room, seemingly due to bugs in a new billing system the hotel has recently brought in. Combined with the till issues at the restaurant, it points to wider teething problems with whatever new system they've rolled out, and it's worth double-checking your bill carefully during your stay. Health club, pool and spa: The hotel itself is fine, if a little tired, but the health club was the low point. On our first morning we used the pool and spa but felt uncomfortable the whole time. The facilities are in serious need of repair, cracked, missing, or water-stained ceiling tiles, and a visibly damaged shower hose in the pool area that needs replacing. More concerning was that the whole space felt grubby and in need of a deep clean, to the point of feeling close to unsanitary. The one genuine positive was the pool temperature, which was very comfortable. If I return to this hotel, I won't be using the health club again, and I didn't go back to it for the rest of this stay. Despite its potential, the hotel suffered from poor maintenance, weak communication, and reactive management.

I had a really disappointing experience after staying at this hotel. I accidentally forgot to sign out of my Netflix account on the TV, and weeks later I discovered that someone had accessed it, deleted every single one of my profiles, renamed them to “Kids” and “Room 219”, and completely reset my account. This is my personal Netflix subscription that I pay for, so finding someone using and changing my account was incredibly frustrating. Hotels should have a proper process to ensure streaming accounts are signed out between guests to protect people’s privacy. Whether it was a member of staff or another guest, this should never have been able to happen. That being said, I do want to mention that there was a young black women (I didn’t get her name) who worked there who was incredibly kind, understanding, and genuinely helpful during my stay. She was a credit to the hotel, and my complaint isn’t about her at all. Unfortunately, the way my account was left accessible has overshadowed what was otherwise a positive interaction with her.