Holiday Inn Darlington - North A1M, an IHG Hotel

The hotel was difficult to find initially. A sign at the end of the road would alleviate the issue. Could be down to tree growth ? Reception was great and room also. What spoiled our stay was a coach full of school children that arrived around 9 pm. The noise in reception and later in the corridor as they went to their room was high and disturbed our Friday evening . This noise continued on and off in to the early hours and started again at 06.30. No supervision of these young people past check in was apparent. Knowing that this trip was arriving, wouldn’t it have made sense to segregate room allocations ? Unfortunately breakfast was also disturbed. Not ideal for a relaxing start to Saturday morning ! Very disappointed

Excellent overnight stay, family friendly and easy to find. excellent breakfast, lots of choice for all. Good value for money.

On arrival I thought the reception person had an attitude but chose to ignore it. I had my evening meal and went to bed. 4.30am I was woken by scratching and tearing noises under the floor . I have experienced vermin many times on our family farm and know it was not a mouse but was sure it was a rat. This continued for about 1 1/2 hours so I did not sleep anymore. When I went down for breakfast I was cool about the events of the night and had my breakfast. My bill was pre paid but I went to reception to double check and hand my key back. The same reception person was on duty. Again she made abflippant remark which annoyed me as I work in sales and expect a pleasant courteous Thank you - good bye etc .... As I had planned I then quietly mentioned the rat episode. A man was called from the office who I assumed was a maintenance person. I explained and left. I understand that vermin are difficult to control and can get into buildings in all sorts of ways. However I did expect a call from management to at least apologise ! ? Perhaps the receptionist did not report the incident or perhaps the person is management. Earlier in the week I stayed at the Holiday Inn Inverness and really enjoyed it / please check out my comments.