DERRY TOWNSHIP, DAUPHIN COUNTY, Pa. -- Absolutely surreal - that’s how a woman describes her experience at a Dauphin County hotel.
The woman arrived at the Holiday Inn Express on 610 Walton Avenue in Derry Township Saturday night only to find the front lobby empty.
"We have a hotel reservation. We just wanted to come over here after the wedding, mind our own business, and we show up here to like an apocalypse," said Lisa Landis in a Facebook video.
It was an odd situation for Landis of Perry County.
She records what appears to be an empty hotel lobby.
"We just assumed when we first got there, they were busy. Maybe, they were tied up elsewhere in the hotel, so we tried to wait patiently," she said.
Landis had been celebrating a wedding in Dauphin County earlier that evening and says she just wanted to check into the room she had booked. After more than an hour of waiting, Landis says she had to do something.
“There’s a Holiday Inn Express toll free number. We tried that multiple times," she explained.
She records the situation after she tries to get in touch with an employee.
"We were hung up on, the third time, somebody said, 'maybe they’re helping another guest,' we said, ‘we’ve been waiting for two hours - that must be quite the request,'" she says in the video.
Lobby phones rang and no employee there to take the calls...
Landis then decided to call Derry Township Police. She says police responded and stayed until a worker showed up at the hotel.
In all, it took about 2 hours before an employee showed up, and she could finally check in.
When Landis arrived at room, she said it was trashed, and two other rooms offered by the hotel were not up to standard either.
Landis said she finally had an acceptable place to stay once the hotel offered her a fourth room.
FOX43 reached out to the Intercontinental Hotels Group and a spokesperson sent this statement regarding the incident: "There appears to have been a lapse in protocol and we’ve reached out to this independently owned and operated hotel to understand what happened. We understand that the hotel has refunded the guest for her room charges and we sincerely apologize for an experience that falls well short of our expectations for offering hospitality."
Landis says the refund is nice; she would like answers, though, from the franchise in Dauphin County.
"There was a lot of guests there, and to just know, there was no one working. Things happen. Mistakes are made. No one’s answering any questions," she added.
Landis said there were dozens of children at the hotel the next morning and employees working as though nothing had happened. She says if she didn't take photos and record the incident, a person might not have even known it took place.
FOX43 spoke to the general manager of the hotel in person Monday afternoon. He said he could not speak on camera and referred us back to Intercontinental Hotels Group.
Late Monday night, FOX43 received a statement from Richard Myers, the General Manager of the Holday Inn Express, on behalf of the hotel in Derry Township, reading: "We sincerely apologize to any guess who experience service interruptions on Saturday evening, which were a result of a lapse in employee protocol. We recognize that this service Interruption Falls well short of expectations and have reimbursed the guests involved for their full room charges. The individuals involved or no longer employed by the hotel, and we are retraining our employees to ensure that the situation does not happen again."