First of all, I do want to say that the staff at this property was very nice. They were friendly and helpful, and I almost feel bad that I was as frustrated as I was.

The hotel is under MAJOR construction. Normally, that's not an issue to me unless there's a lot of noise. However, the area that's under construction makes it very difficult to get to many parts of the hotel. We had a lot of stuff with us, and we had to take a (very difficult) bell cart outside, up two steep (and not ADA compliant) ramps, swipe our keys to get back in the building, squeeze in a tiny elevator, and get to our room. Then we had to do the same thing to return the cart. The hallways around the construction smelled like sewer. Later that night, we wanted some ice to have a drink in our room. There was no ice machine accessible to our room and we had to go all the way back to the lobby where the very sweet front desk agent got us some from the kitchen. On the way back from getting the ice, my sister came across an elderly couple struggling to get the same bell cart up the ramps and helped.

The room and bathroom were small, and not as clean as I would have expected. Again, I don't have a problem with a small room, but the cleanliness was just not there. The bottom line is that I spent WAY too much money on this hotel. It was okay, but for the money, it was not worth all of the inconvenience with the construction. I've spent substantially less to stay at Holiday Inn Express properties in downtown Chicago. The only break we got for the construction was a waived $10.00 parking fee. I am definitely disappointed.

We were in St. Louis to visit a relative and found this hotel to be the closest to them with the amenities we wanted. Everything went very well until we got into the hotel early in the evening on a busy Friday night.

Our first warning was the construction vehicles in the parking lot. The second was that the hotel was being upgraded to an Indigo hotel. The staff did everything they could to make us comfortable but we had to carry our luggage quite a distance, going outdoors once, to get to our room.

The room had a strange odor to it because of the construction and we could fully understand the need for the construction as we became acquainted with the room. The furniture was tired and scratched. The toilet was almost unusable because it was so close to the vanity that a normal adult could not sit on the toilet without leaning away from the vanity. The shower was a horror story.

About the only thing that was good was the bed and that was GREAT!

The next morning, we discovered that the breakfast was WELL BELOW the normal standards of Holiday Inn Express members (I'm a platinum level member of their rewards program so I speak from experience). The fresh fruit wasn't. The bread and muffins were stale and the pancake maker was not behaving well.

The sole saving grace for the first two days was the staff. They were unfailingly kind and helpful and did their best to make us feel better about staying there. Since we were staying until Wednesday morning on Sunday afternoon, I asked if we could switch rooms to one that was not in the construction zone. Since there was a free room available, they made the switch for no fee. NICE!

The new, finished room was MUCH better. The only problem was that the shower curtain was still not satisfactory and the shower was too narrow.

As the week progressed, things changed about the breakfast. Some of the food got better (western omelettes instead cheese omelettes, for example) and some of the food got worse (the bananas for example).

Overall I feel like a 4.5 rating for the new room is accurate and a 2.5 rating for the old room is accurate. The staff boosted the review from a 3.5 to a 4.0 rating.