I stayed for two days in Holiday Inn, Carlsbad, CA. Overall my experience has been quite negative. They have become pretty cheap in services and quality. For 130 $ per night, it is simply not worth it, maybe even 50$ is too much.

Holiday Inn Quality & Service
My first impression of the room was negative. It was a non-smoking room and yet it smelled strongly of smoke. The door wasn't closing normally. You had to slam it hard (really hard) to make it close. door chainThe door chain was completely broken. It is a very important security device to protect yourself from intruders. I asked them to change the room (within 1 hour of my entry). They chose to repair it instead. The repairman, while a nice fellow, spent over an hour to repair the door. Overall the room requires basic hardware maintenance.

The front-desk staff isn't very helpful but I would give them a passing grade.

What bothers me about these hotels is that they fails to provide even a single bottle of complementary drinking water. Previously it used to be the norm. In the name of conservation they are very particular to point out that you have to dump the towels on the floor to ensure their replacement. Personally I would prefer them to designate a rack for that purpose. There is no service worth mentioning except their wireless internet access, which is anyway common to all hotels these days. Also their link isn't very strong and occasionally fails.

BTW: Is it too much to expect a writing pad with a pen?

After two days I moved over to Ramada in Carlsbad. So far it looks better.