Hotel Indigo - Dusseldorf - Victoriaplatz, an IHG Hotel

We visited here for ProWein. The price goes very crazy - for a normal room it goes to 200eur+. The room has a bad smell near toilet, turning OK after ventilation, but gone bad again in the night.
Overall nice, if with normal price. It’s convenient around.
The service over the counter is nice, they are friendly and always helpful.

Loved the breakfast, definitely worth the extra!
The rooms are nice but a bit small, which if fine if you don't plan on spending much awake time in the room.
I would advise against paying extra to get a room with a balcony, despite the nice pictures online you don't actually get more than a doorway.
The service was the biggest letdown of my trip, especially as I experienced issues with the wifi every single day of my trip. I had work meetings interrupted two days in a row and the staff offered no help or workaround.

We had overal a good stay. We arrived Friday evening and have been greeted nicely. (Although the welcome for a platinum member was nothing more then a small chocolate). Upon requesting the best and most cost effective way to park our car, we’ve been directed by the staff to the Qpark next door.

We’ve been told that the hotel would validate our parking. My wife and I where pleasantly surprised. The way it was presented it sounded like the parking fee was included in our overnight stays. (This was obviously a wrong assumption on our part).

Upon validating our ticket, we’ve been surprised by a cost of 44€. Understanding this was not part of the service. Unfortunate, but fully understandable. But I at least expected that this was a discounted rate, as it was so nicely offered by the staff on Friday.

When I walked passed the ticket machine of the Qpark to my car I found out it was actually more expensive in the hotel. I paid 10% extra.

I found out after I already paid, but decided to ask the reception for a clarification.

The staff started off very rude and impolite. The lady at the reception was incredibly arrogant and acted annoyed. She even scolded me. She insisted it was a service of the hotel. However I fail to see any service, I had to queue up at the reception for the validation and had to pay there. I don’t see the difference compared to paying at Qpark. In fact, there was no queue at Qpark so it would have been faster to pay at the Qpark machine.

It would be nice to be threaded with respect and in a polite manner by the staff when I simply ask for a logic explanation for a 10% charge. (A explanation I didn’t receive even in a impolite manner).

Before writing a review I first send an email to the hotel and replied to their in-house review survey. However, after getting no response from the hotel I decided to still also post this online.

In my opinion the service is the key thing in a hotel. This one unfortunately clearly missed the mark. As a long time IHG member I expected better. This was the worst staff out of all the hotels I visited from IHG, which is usually very good.

EDIT:
The reply (also seen below) from the management of the hotel offered a fine explanation and professional approach. Although i left with a sour feeling, which still was unpleasant, the hotel at least took the steps to mitigate this as much as they could.

I have update the rating with a star.