Hotel Review: Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North, AZ

If you’d told me a few months ago that we’d make a special effort to stay at an airport hotel, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. I would’ve been wrong though as that’s what happened in April and May.

After visiting Tucson again and getting our first COVID vaccinations, we booked a four night stay at the Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North in Arizona. Shae’s mom and stepdad were joining us for a week near Sedona and were flying into Phoenix, so we figured we’d spend a few days there beforehand near the airport.

When looking online, I saw that the Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North was a decent price using IHG Rewards points. Even better, every room in the hotel is a suite with two rooms which is something Shae and I value highly.

Don’t Get The Hotels Confused

If you end up wanting to stay at this hotel after reading my review, be aware that there are several similarly named hotels near Phoenix airport. The only one with two room suites for all guests (and the subject of this review) is the Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North.

There’s a Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport (i.e. minus ‘North’ at the end) which seems to have good reviews online, but doesn’t have two room suites for all guests. There’s also a Holiday Inn Express & Suites Phoenix Airport North (i.e. has ‘Express’ in the title), but that’s not the property we stayed at either.

Why We Stayed 3 Times In A Month

We ended up enjoying that first stay so much, we decided to book a second stay there a few weeks later. Shae’s dad was getting remarried in Virginia and we’d originally planned to drive to Las Vegas to fly out from there. However, we could get equally priced and convenient flights out of Phoenix airport and so figured we could stay at the Holiday Inn beforehand as we enjoyed our first stay there so much. Staying there was even more convenient because we could leave our car with them for only $5 per night.

We were then due to arrive back at 11:30pm, with Shae having to teach online first thing the next morning and both of us having to work the following day. It therefore made sense to stay another couple of nights after getting back from Virginia which made that our third stay at the hotel within about a month.

Although service from the front desk was poor across all three stays, we loved our stays there and would happily return. Here’s a complete review of the Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North.

Check-In

The check-in experience for our first couple of stays wasn’t too bad, although the third was quite simply appalling (more about that in the ‘Service’ section later on). For our first stay we were only staying four nights and so were happy enough with one of the regular two room suites.

Our second stay was for eight nights, so we asked if it was possible to get an upgrade to a two room suite with a kitchen seeing as I have Spire Elite status with IHG. Spire is their highest status tier, but IHG properties in the US are generally abysmal about giving room upgrades even when asking. This second visit ended up having a lengthy check-in process, but ultimately we were able to get a suite with a kitchen, so we appreciated the effort that front desk agent went to.

The lobby is fairly spacious and has several seating areas where you can wait in the cool.

Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North Layout

The hotel is laid out differently to a lot of hotels because once you’ve checked in, you exit out the lobby into their large courtyard area. Depending on where your room is located, you head to the left or right and walk around outdoors (despite it being within the hotel premises).

The front desk has maps of the hotel’s layout which helps you find your way to your suite.

The walkways are all covered which provides necessary shade from the heat of the sun throughout the day.

There’s something like half a dozen elevators (and accompanying stairwells) spread out around the property, so all the suites are fairly close to one if you’re not allocated a suite on the first floor.

During our first stay we were in room 440 which is on the top floor of the hotel. Our second stay was also on the fourth floor in room 448, while our third stay was on the third floor in room 318.

Seeing as we were visiting during COVID times, the doors had seals on them confirming no one had entered the suite since it had been cleaned.

Living Room

In all the suites you enter directly into the living room. The living room and bedroom layouts are a little different depending on if you get a suite with a kitchen or not.

Non-Kitchen Suites

Most suites don’t have a kitchen. For that room type there’s a sleeper sofa and coffee table, with a desk and office chair in the corner. In fact, there are two desks; one on rollers so that you can move it to wherever you want in the living room, with a taller desk fixed in place.

On the opposite side of the room was an armchair and a TV on top of a unit with storage drawers.

The TV channel selection wasn’t amazing, but we did appreciate the fact that you could see a list of channels and what shows were on. We ended up using our Fire TV Stick though to increase our viewing options.

Behind the armchair was a wet bar with a mini fridge and microwave. As mini fridges go, this one was a good size and, if I’m remembering correctly, had a small freezer compartment inside.

The wet bar included a Keurig coffee maker with a few different types of K-Cups.

Kitchen Suites

As mentioned earlier, suites with kitchens have a slightly different layout as can be seen in the photo below. It has the same sleeper sofa and coffee table on one side of the room and TV and storage unit on the other.

However, there’s no desk and office chair in the living room; instead, that’s replaced by a small dining table and two chairs. The wet bar meanwhile is replaced by a kitchen which includes a larger microwave, full-sized fridge-freezer, dishwasher and stovetop.

What was strange about the kitchen is that “due to COVID” there was nothing else in the kitchen – no plates, dishes, silverware, cookware, glasses, etc. They said we could request that those items be brought to the suite, but they weren’t provided automatically. That was just plain weird as all other hotels we’ve stayed at during the pandemic that have kitchens have always provided those items. Some hotel brands have left all those items in the dishwasher after running a wash, but we’ve never come across them removing all kitchen items.

In the end, we didn’t request that they bring any of those items because we travel with our portable kitchen and so had most of those items other than pots and pans. My Instant Pot made up for that and our main reason for wanting a kitchen was so that we’d have a dishwasher and fridge-freezer, both of which were available to us.

Bedroom

The bedroom was through a door at the end of the living room. This layout works perfectly because the courtyard of the hotel can get noisy with other guests walking past, noise from the pool (although that gets closed at 10pm), etc. This means that at nighttime you don’t hear anything like that as the bedroom is isolated from all that noise.

Non-Kitchen Suites

During our first and third stays we had a bedroom with one king bed. The bed was comfortable and the blackout curtains worked very well, so that helped us get a good night’s sleep. That’s particularly helpful if you’re staying at this hotel after an overnight flight and want to sleep during the day.

Both sides of the bed had two power outlets, making it easier to charge your devices by the bed overnight. The bedframe also had bendable LED reading lights on both sides.

On the opposite side of the room was a closet, some dresser drawers and a TV.

I’m not sure if every suite has a small balcony, but at least two of our suites had them (I can’t remember about the third). There were pretty nice views as far as airport hotels go seeing as they looked out over mountains.

Kitchen Suites

Similar to how suites with kitchens have a different living room layout, they have a different bedroom layout to suites without kitchens. Seeing as suites with kitchens don’t have a desk and office chair in the living room, those are moved into the bedroom instead.

The kitchen suite they allocated us had two queen beds rather than one king, but we were fine with that tradeoff in order to have the kitchen.

This room type doesn’t have a standalone wardrobe/closet, but it does have a small closet nonetheless with a luggage rack.

Bathroom

Both room types have the sink and vanity in the main bedroom area rather than in the bathroom. This was somewhat inconvenient as it meant having to use it by the light of my phone at night so that I didn’t wake up Shae.

The bathroom had a bathtub with shower and in all three suites we stayed in the water pressure of the shower was excellent.

Amenities

In addition to every suite having two rooms, another reason the Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North is a great place to stay is due to its general layout and amenities.

The large courtyard and all the trees makes the hotel feel like a resort, despite it being an airport hotel. There’s a good-sized pool as well as a hot tub in the center of the property. This stays lit after dark, although it does get closed at 10pm.

As you exit the lobby, there’s a large outdoor seating area, along with a couple of fire pits. The fire pits are nice to have at night, but you’ll probably want to push your seats far back from them because even in April and May it was often 85-90° after dark.

There’s a separate covered seating area off to the left of that too.

If it’s too hot for you outside, there’s more seating in the lobby.

Also in the lobby is a business center with a couple of computers and a printer. Some hotel business centers can be super-slow, but it only took me a couple of minutes to print off what I needed when using their printer.

Also in the lobby – next to the front desk – is a pantry area.

The hotel’s fitness room is hidden away on the third floor and contains several pieces of equipment and weights.

On the first floor there’s a guest laundry room. The washing machines and dryers all cost $1.25 per load which is very reasonable.

Breakfast

Holiday Inn is a brand that doesn’t offer free breakfast to all guests, so that’s something to be aware of. For breakfast there’s 44th Street Bistro Lounge & Coffee Shop which can be found in the lobby.

Their breakfast selection is limited, although their parfait with granola was sizeable and very tasty.

Burger Theory

The hotel also has a restaurant attached to the hotel called Burger Theory.

They’re apparently open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as room service. However, from what I can tell they don’t offer traditional breakfast fare – their menu appears to be the same throughout the day, no matter when you order.

We ate lunch there one afternoon and their burgers and fries are very tasty. However, at $14-$16 for single burgers and $17-$19 for double burgers, it was slightly more expensive than I would’ve expected.

Pet Policy

The Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North is a pet-friendly hotel and charges a pet fee of $50 per stay. That’s not bad because it’s not too excessive if you’re only staying one night, but is great value if you’re staying for some time.

Pets are supposed to weigh less than 25 lbs, but we saw dogs larger than that staying there. There’s also a limit of two pets per room. Pet-friendly rooms are meant to be on the first floor, but we got allocated rooms on the third or fourth floors for all three of our stays, despite having Truffles with us each time. We actually appreciated being on the fourth floor for two of those stays as that’s the top floor and so it meant there was no sound from people in a room above us.

The large courtyard gives lots of space to walk your pups around in, with one area in particular having a lot of grass.

Shuttle

With the Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North being an airport hotel, they have a shuttle to and from the airport which is complimentary. It seems to run on a set schedule, but it’s worth arranging a seat with the front desk in advance in case it’s particularly busy when you need a ride.

COVID-19

This’ll probably be one of the last hotel reviews I write where I’ll need to include a COVID-19 section seeing as most hotel chains are easing restrictions and lifting mask mandates.

During our stays they still required guests to wear masks in enclosed areas (we stayed in April and May 2021). Enclosed areas at the Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North are few and far between though and are pretty much limited to the lobby, elevators, fitness room and guest laundry room.

Service

Update May 2022: We stayed at this hotel again last month and had a much better experience service-wise. The front desk staff were much more friendly, helpful and responsive. Shae let the manager know that service had improved compared to past stays and it sounds like something that they’ve put a focus on this past year, so hopefully better service will be a consistent experience.

Here’s what happened during our first few stays.

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We didn’t request housekeeping during our stay, so there’s nothing for me to note on that front. Service from the front desk overall during our stay was pretty poor though.

It simply felt like most of their front desk employees didn’t want to be there. They never seemed to greet guests coming in or out and you had to actively get their attention when standing right in front of them as they’d just blank you otherwise.

There were one or two good front desk agents though. It took quite a while to get checked in for our second stay, but that was because she was trying to get us upgraded to a suite with a kitchen (which she did manage in the end). Then when checking out from that second stay, the agent working that evening couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful. We were leaving our car at the hotel while we flew back to Virginia, but didn’t want to leave one of our boxes in the car as it had stuff in it we didn’t want baking in the sun. She was happy to keep it stored in the room where they ordinarily store luggage for guests temporarily. Overall though, she was just very nice and helpful (unfortunately I didn’t make a note of her name).

Contrast that with the person working the night we checked in for our third stay. For starters, we called the hotel from the airport to ask about the shuttle. It took forever for her to answer, then she told us the wrong pickup location. Thankfully we saw the shuttle park in a different location, so we managed to run down in time before he left.

When we arrived at the hotel with a few other people needing to check in, we all got inside only for no employees to be seen. We stood waiting around for several minutes, calling out to try to get someone’s attention, but nothing. We called the hotel and nothing.

Eventually an employee ambled out as slow as can be. Then, without acknowledging any of us, walked into the back office before eventually reappearing. She acted like she didn’t want to be there and was about as impersonal of a front desk agent as we’ve ever encountered. She clearly didn’t want to be there or help anyone, so check-in was a really awkward experience.

We finally got our keys and asked if we could get the box we’d asked to be stored while we were gone. We described it as a white box with our names, so she slowly wandered over to the storage room which is on the other side of the lobby by the coffee bar. She reappeared a minute or two later saying our box wasn’t in there. This concerned us because it had a couple of gifts in there I’d received for Christmas. We described the box again and she looked again and said it wasn’t in there.

Having seen the original front desk agent place it in the storage room with our own eyes, we knew it had been there before, so we asked if we could take a look. This grouchy agent thankfully let us take a look and sure enough, the white box with our name on it was right there on the floor. There were only two other boxes in the storage room – neither of which were white – so I’ve no idea how she managed to miss the big white box. Her explanation was “Oh, I thought you meant a USPS box”. With our box finally discovered, we quickly escaped from her miserableness and headed up to our suite.

Wi-Fi

The hotel offers free Wi-Fi to all guests and it seemed to be a decent speed. I was able to do a Zoom meeting from the bedroom with the door closed as Shae was teaching in the living room and it picked up a good enough connection for that.

Check-In & Check-Out Times

Check-in is at 4pm, while check-out is at 11am.

Location

The Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North is just off Hwy 202 and Hwy 143, as well as being close to I-10. There’s a Food City grocery store a couple of minutes walk away, along with a few fast food places also within walking distance. It’s nice having those within walkable distance seeing as a lot of guests probably get the shuttle to and from the airport and so might not have a car with them.

Parking

It’s free to park at the hotel and there are a lot of spaces all around the property, although during busy times you might need to drive around the back of the hotel to park there. There are several side gates all around the property, so if you already have a room key you can enter the hotel premises that way without needing to walk all the way back round to the front entrance.

If you want to leave your car at the hotel while you fly off somewhere, they charge $5 per night which is a great price. If you’ll be away for several weeks then you can probably do better by paying for long-term parking somewhere else. However, with us only being away for four nights, it was incredibly convenient being able to stay at the hotel before and after our flights and paying $20 for our car while we were gone.

Cost

We booked all three stays using points as that always provided great value. IHG Rewards uses dynamic pricing, so the number of points you have to redeem can fluctuate depending on how busy the hotel is. However, nearly every night we stayed was only 15,000 or 16,000 points per night rather than $110-$120 per night including tax for cash rates. While paying with points was better value, $110-$120 is also good value considering how nice the hotel is and that you can get a free shuttle to and from the airport if needed.

Be sure to check your card after checking out if paying with points. Despite booking our stays using points, when checking our credit card later on they’d overcharged us by about $270 (there should only have been a food charge for $20 or so). I subsequently called the hotel and got that refunded, but it’s definitely something to keep an eye out for.

On the points front, we did even better than 16,000 points per night. That’s because we have the IHG Premier credit card which offers every 4th night free on award stays. Our first stay was four nights long, while our second stay was eight nights. That means we got the 4th night free during our first stay and both the 4th and 8th nights free on our second stay.

We also have the old IHG Select card which offers a 10% points rebate when booking award stays. Taking into account the 4th night free and 10% points rebate, our average nightly cost for those two stays was 10,125 points for our first four night stay and 10,913 points per night for the second stay of eight nights.

Our third stay was 16,000 points per night, but because that was only for two nights we didn’t get to take advantage of the 4th night free benefit. However, we did still get a 10% points rebate which reduced the cost of that stay to 14,400 points per night.

Based on the cash cost of the hotel, for most nights we got slightly better than 1cpp (cent per point) of value by using points which is about double the value you can normally expect to get when redeeming IHG Rewards points.

Final Thoughts

We stayed three different times at the Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North and loved the hotel. It feels like a resort without being one and it’s excellent that every single guest gets a spacious two room suite as that’s not at all common for the Holiday Inn brand.

It’s in a convenient location if you need to fly out of Phoenix airport and has a free shuttle. The hotel is great value when using points, but also seems to be good value when paying the cash rate if you don’t have IHG Rewards points.

Just don’t expect much from the front desk agents because the majority of them don’t seem to want to be there. Having said that, if we visit Phoenix again in the future, it’s highly likely that we’ll stay at this hotel again because the two room suites and the hotel’s amenities make up for the lack of service.

Truffles Approval Rating

Truffles gives the Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North three paws out of four – pawsome! The pet fee of $50 per stay was reasonable and she liked being able to walk around the property to do her business as it meant she didn’t get dragged on a longer walk in the heat of the day.

The biggest downside for her was some of the noise. Housekeeping wheels around laundry carts to collect sheets and those carts were pretty noisy as they echo around the courtyard. Truffles has this weird aversion to small wheels (she hates skateboards and scooters too), so every time she heard the carts being wheeled around the hotel she’d start barking.

Unfortunately it felt like housekeeping wheeled those carts around from 8am to 8pm and there always seemed to be someone pushing one somewhere. That’s why they get marked down one paw, but that’s more due to Truffles’ small wheel discrimination rather than it being a problem with the hotel as such. If your dog isn’t reactive to that kind of thing, it wouldn’t be an issue.

Our Rating

Room = 4.7 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 4.7 / 5
Food = 4.1 / 5
Location = 4.5 / 5
Service = 2.5 / 5
Dealing With COVID-19 (A new – hopefully temporary – category for our hotel reviews) = 4.4 / 5
Overall Value = 4.8 / 5

Total = 4.24/5 (this score would’ve been higher if it wasn’t for the generally crappy service)

Address

Holiday Inn & Suites Phoenix Airport North, 1515 N 44th St, Phoenix, AZ 85008