Holiday Inn Express & Suites Ocean City

We had a rough experience. Didn't get much sleep. Should rate lower, but the hotel itself is what you would expect from a Holiday Inn Express. Nice clean lobby. Rooms themselves were fine. In person, staff were pleasant. However, I would never stay here again and I'm at hotels 60 plus nights a year. Our car was one of 5 in the parking lot off-season, and the noise in the hotel was loud until after 1am and began again before 6am. It was not construction noise. It was the staff playing music too loud in the lobby at night and literally projecting their voices throughout the hotel in the morning. I am not a light sleeper either, and I'm fine staying at a budget brand that is not as updated. When I stay at a hotel, the key thing I want is to be able to sleep. I guess the staff doesn't understand how much noise they make and how their voices project/echo throughout the hotel. Or perhaps the walls are paper thin. I can't imagine how loud the hotel is at night during the busy season.

Front desk staff were all wonderful, and the rooms and common areas were clean and well maintained. But if you're looking for a good night's sleep, this is not the place to get it. There is ZERO sound-proofing, the walls are super-thin, and there's nothing in place to keep doors from slamming loudly.

The noisiest, however, was the housekeeping staff. I understand that housekeeping needs to turn over rooms fairly quickly, and they need to start early. But if the hotel offers an 11 a.m. checkout, then why on earth is the housekeeping staff shouting loudly across the halls to one another at 7:30 in the morning??? And on a Sunday, no less! At one point, my husband went and banged on the inside of our door to get their attention because they were talking so loudly right in front of our door. Consequently, we had a horrible night's sleep. We liked the hotel otherwise, but we won't go back.

We have stayed in a lot of hotels in Ocean City. This one was the cleanest and the staff was the most helpful. Often I’m meet with masked contempt, irritation, or apathy, but not here. Everyone was helpful and genuinely nice. The only drawback was the lack of balcony, but proximity to great food made up for it.