Holiday Inn Express & Suites Rantoul an IHG Hotel

Nice clean hotel with very friendly staff. Sandy is the staff member that is in charge of the breakfast and is fantastic! She takes such pride in her job. Greets every guest and makes certain they are happy with breakfast. She also was very helpful at check in recommending local restaurants for dinner.

I'm a 43-year-old man who, to the best of my knowledge, has never written a review for anything in my life. That said, after my experience and the experiences of the rest of my traveling party (girls travel softball team) this past weekend, I decided that today is the day. No one, let me repeat, NO ONE, should ever stay at this place. At the surface, this is just like any other Holiday Inn Express or similar hotel. The lobby and guest rooms have the standard look, beds are comfortable, and the place appears to be clean but that’s pretty much where the good feedback ends. Let me explain… First, the pool. Two years ago, the same traveling party stayed at this same hotel. Upon check-in we were informed that the pool was, unfortunately, out of order due to maintenance. For most groups this wouldn't be a big deal, for a softball team, it’s a big inconvenience but we're a generally understanding group and know that everyone deserves a little bit of grace. Pools, like anything else, need maintained, we just picked a bad weekend. It just would have been nice if the hotel had communicated that to us before check-in. Fast forward two years, same group, same hotel, same situation with the pool. Closed due to maintenance, no communication about that until the time of check-in, well past the grace period for a cancellation/refund. The bookkeeping, management and reservation system at this place are completely disorganized. Upon check-in, over half of our party were told that their reservations did not exist, a few were told that the hotel was full and couldn't accommodate them. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, in hindsight, the hotel "found" rooms to accommodate even those who they had previously told that there was no occupancy. This was fairly contentious at times and definitely stressful for a number of our families. Note that, as we're traveling as a team, we did not book our reservations directly through the hotel but through a third party called Traveling Teams. The hotel claimed that there was an issue with communication on Traveling Teams' end. I find that hard to believe given that they did have half of our reservations but maybe that was a factor, if so, shame on them too. One night, during our stay, the local police showed up in the lobby. Apparently, a guest from outside our party had arrived to check-in and found no attendant at the desk so they called the authorities. The attendant was not even on the property and the police indicated this wasn't the first time this had happened with this particular attendant. When the front desk attendant actually managed to be at their post, they issued key cards to a child without their parent's permission. This occurred when parents told the child to stay out of the room during naptime for their siblings. Before you get judgy here, yes, there is a discipline aspect with the children and, yes, the children were held accountable. That said, key cards to guestrooms shouldn't be issued without confirmation by an adult registered to the room. What would stop anybody from successfully requesting a key card and accessing someone else's guestroom. While the hotel appears clean and well-kept, issues with general hotel maintenance kept popping up. It rained nearly all day one day during our stay. It seems like half the windows in this place leak. Water was leaking into the lobby through one of the lobby windows, down the hall, more water was leaking in through the windows outside the lobby restrooms (which were another issue; the entire time we stayed there the men's room had no soap or paper towels). Upon returning to our guestrooms, water was leaking in through the guestroom windows of over half our party. Clothes that were left near the windows of these rooms were soaked. Additionally, one of the families in our party dealt with ants in their guestroom and the toilet seat in our room was cracked. Maybe they should close the hotel for maintenance instead of just the pool. Not a chance when the reservation agency for the sports complex across the road is funneling suckers like me, who are paying over $200+ per night to deal with nonsense like this, to the hotel by the dozen. To finish off our death by 1,000 papercuts, after checking out and returning home, we found that we'd been overcharged an extra night. Upon finding this, we alerted others in our party and heard that at least two other families in our party were also similarly overcharged. After calling the hotel and speaking to Bre, who was very professional and helpful, our overcharge was identified and corrected. Thank you, Bre, for a pleasant interaction at the end of an otherwise regrettable experience.

Beware of thieves in the guise of management. I was on an extended stay and wished to discuss a better rate for a two week stay. I was told they could not do that until the manager came in on Monday. This being Saturday, I was going to have to stay two more days to talk to the manager. When I got my bill, I was charged almost $200 /night for those 2 days, which was nearly 40% higher than the rate I had been paying. When I asked to cancel my extension to avoid the exorbitant rate, i was told it was "nearly 4:00 pm" and that I would be charged that night. Criminals.

We stay at the hotel each time we travel west. It has, and remains one that we will choose. The room was clean and comfortable, nice linens. We were disappointed this time at all the mud right at the entrance of hotel, not a good first impression - only would take minutes to clean this and the elevator.

THE PROS: Very spacious room with king size bed and lounge, large bench to put items on and underneath, and desk and dresser. Fridge and microwave. The bathroom was good size, shower had glass doors. The bed was comfortable; however, the bottom sheet was pilled. Good selection of breakfast items, but the sausage patties were overcooked and tasteless and the scrambled eggs were also overdone. Biscuits and gravy were okay and there was a good selection of yogurt, cereal, donuts, and breakfast bars. THE CONS: As soon as we took our shoes off in the room, our socks were immediately wet. We grabbed a bath towel and attempted to blot up the moisture, which was throughout but mostly where the tile met the carpet - this area was soaking wet. Not sure if the carpet had just been cleaned or what but we went to the front desk to ask for a fan to try to dry the carpet further. Kim, who had checked us in, seemed annoyed but got a fan for us. (We left the fan running both days we stayed and the carpet was still wet.) Additionally, we found the tile floor to be quite dirty and this was also reported to the front desk. The first morning we went to use the Keurig to make coffee, the lid had been left up by housekeeping and would not stay down, so the coffeemaker was unusable. Brie was now at the front desk and was very helpful in providing a working Keurig. When we explained the challenges we'd had (wet carpet, dirty tile, broken coffeemaker), she called the manager and was able to make an adjustment on our bill, which was very appreciated. Brie provided excellent customer service and we commend her in the way she dealt with us to improve our stay. She is one reason I'm rating this Very Good vs. lower.