A quick summary of quality can be assessed at Trip Advisor, where you'll see an uncommonly negative ratio of bad reviews. I had a pretty clean slate going in, and I've heard nothing but good things about them (like better than Hyatt and Red Lion), but when I turned in this (my scathing review of the terrible chain), my boss called me up to give me a face-to-face.

I was a tad intimidated, since it seemed like the right thing to write up when I put pen to paper, but I couldn't imagine his take on it. I know our company has sold ads to this same family of companies before, but I can't just give them a good review for nothing, and if he wants to do it, let him, he can pay me and throw away my review in kind.

Turns out my boss got a similar sort of treatment out of them a gaggle of years ago, only worse. My experience was that I tried for months to get permission to come in and take pictures, was forced to show up to shoot it guerilla-style, and got kicked straight out once it was observed that I was taking pictures and scribbling notes, and thereby treated like a criminal despite my contacts and press credentials.

My editor's experience was worse by a mile. I thought he'd be furious with my spurious review, but it seems as though he understood it. Apparently he was when he was authoring a parenting advice column they had offered him a few days at their San Francisco property, but instead refused to even let him a room or even come on-sight to take a picture. Not at a discount, not at full price, not at any price for any reason.

Had I known this, I might not have spent many hundreds on two days of room to review what turned out to be an overpriced, under-valued rat-hole.

They have the worst service and they do so at the very worst worst prices..

From my own experience, it's a 3-star hotel at 5-star prices, and they snuck up the "resort fee" (at $30 per night) and didn't give me any more security or comfort than I got anywhere else.

If you're looking for a good hotel, don't waste your time by mistaking or deluding yourself to think that the ever-weaker Intercontinental Hotels are somehow still dominant. Spend your time and money almost anywhere else and move on from there. I tried like hell to get their publicity lady, Natasha Gullette (or maybe it's Natasha Gulette or Gulete at Intercontinental Hotels), but she wouldn't even return my calls. I wasn't even asking for anything for free, but this clown wouldn't even return my calls, as if he already knew how lazy, lackadaisical and generally unforgivable his hotels truly were.)

So I said it, I sent it to my editor, and he already agreed that these clowns were beyond unforgivable, no matter how expensive they may be, and their client satisfaction (or lack of) plainly evidences it every time.

EDITOR'S NOTE - I had some pretty terrible experience with these guys a few years back, but in my case it was Caroline San Fillip who contacted us to request a review only to leave us out in the cold because she was unaware there was an NCAA tournament in town. It was news to me, I wasn't a sports writer, but they treated our staff of five in town for the weekend like mongrel bastards, and we vowed never to go back. This writer had no idea I had such a negative feeling about them, but if this is how they treat invited guests from the media, I can't even begin to imagine how they must treat the rest of the world.

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