My spouse and I
stayed at the Holiday Inn Santiago Airport Terminal on three separate nights
during our two-week trip through Chile. We reserved our stays online using the
hotel’s website, although we could have also booked through the
InterContinental site. (InterContinental Hotels and Resorts [IHG] owns the
Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Staybridge Suites, Candlewood
Suites, Indigo, Kimpton, EVEN, and Hualuxe brands.) For each reservation, we
chose a non-cancellable pre-paid rate to save a few dollars; however, our
credit card was not charged for any one of the stays until we actually checked in
at the front desk.
The location of the Holiday
Inn Santiago Airport Terminal makes it ideal to use for transit accommodations.
Although the property may not have the charm of a downtown hotel, we were happy
with our choice and would stay there again for the convenient location - you
simply walk across the street from the airport terminal! The hotel is so close,
in fact, that you could not even take a taxi if you wanted to. In addition, you
can roll the airport luggage cart/trolley right across the street’s crosswalk,
so you do not need to carry your bags to check in at this hotel.
The public spaces of
the hotel include a lobby check-in area with a reception desk and a small
seating area (sofa, chairs, and a coffee table). The check-in lobby is not
intended for guest lounging, but rather as a place where you can meet someone
not staying at the hotel. The general public cannot access the hotel
restaurant, bar, lounge, restrooms, or larger lobby area without a room key, so
those areas are off-limits, including to airline passengers with long layovers
who want a calm place to eat or relax between flights. The hotel offers some
outdoor space (a small garden area and an outdoor dining patio), an indoor
swimming pool (with sliding doors that lead to a tiny outdoor area with a few
reclining lounge chairs), and a small fitness center. For registered guests,
the spacious combination guest lobby/business center/bar offers a relaxing
oasis filled with uniquely designed furniture positioned under the attractive
open atrium. The hotel can store your luggage if you do not wish to travel with
everything that you brought. We ate a successful meal at the Grill Restaurant
one evening (service was good, and prices were as expected from an airport
hotel restaurant); we also purchased cold bottled beers from the adjacent bar
to enjoy later in our room (hotel rooms have no mini-bars).
On our first stay,
we were assigned a room in the original/main building, but on our two later
stays, our rooms were in the annexed building. We preferred the rooms in the
annex because they were newer and more modern. For example, the bathroom in the
newer rooms had three parts: the main area contained the sink, with separate
frosted glass cubicles that contained the toilet and the shower. (Note that our
newer rooms did not contain a bathtub, whereas the “older” room contained a
combination bathtub/shower.) In the newer rooms, both of us were able to use
the bathroom parts concurrently, yet still maintain some degree of privacy. The
newer rooms contained a built-in shelving unit adjacent to the closet that held
an ice bucket and offered some storage space, and it allowed more space for us
to open our large bags side by side on the furniture designed for this purpose.
(In the older room, the flat surface was slightly too short to place both bags
end-to-end.) Although the television offered many channels, only two (BBC and
CNN) were in English; fortunately the Wi-Fi connection was good enough to
provide an alternate distraction.
We stayed at the
Holiday Inn Santiago Airport Terminal three times over a period of two weeks,
and we appreciated the consistent and dependable service, accommodations, and
amenities it provided. We would stay here again if we transited through
Santiago de Chile.
No comments:
Post a Comment