Holiday Inn Express Baltimore at the Stadiums Review: Location Does the Heavy Lifting

When I first started looking at hotels for the All Blacks vs Springboks match in Baltimore, I was mainly driven by one question: what happens after the game?

I didn’t particularly want to leave M&T Bank Stadium alongside tens of thousands of other spectators and immediately start looking for an Uber. That made hotels within walking distance considerably more useful than they might be on an ordinary Baltimore weekend.

I’d already worked through those options in our guide to where to stay for Springboks vs All Blacks in Baltimore. When it came time to make my own booking, I settled on the Holiday Inn Express Baltimore at the Stadiums. It wasn’t the most interesting hotel available. That wasn’t the point. The hotel sits on Russell Street, with Horseshoe Casino just across the road and M&T Bank Stadium within walking distance. For this trip, that was the feature I was buying.

Our room would have cost $225 for the night, while an award booking was available for 38,000 IHG One Rewards points when we stayed. Instead, I used an IHG 40,000-point free-night certificate. This one was already sitting in my account and needed somewhere useful to go.

An expensive event night, at a hotel chosen specifically because of its location, was a good fit. There was also little reason to spend more points or cash chasing a more luxurious hotel farther away. The purpose of this particular booking was to make the end of the night easy.

We arrived shortly after 11 a.m., well ahead of the hotel’s 3 p.m. check-in time, and we weren’t alone. Several other guests were already waiting to see whether rooms might become available early. The front desk told us that 3 p.m. remained the expectation, although some rooms could begin opening up between noon and 1 p.m. Those would effectively be allocated in order of arrival rather than according to IHG status.

That was straightforward enough. We left our bags and headed across to Horseshoe Casino, which gave us somewhere to spend the time rather than sitting in the lobby. The casino was useful for another reason. I had a small Caesars Rewards balance approaching expiry, so we played briefly before getting lunch from Buffalo Wild Wings inside the property. That purchase also triggered the $10 monthly dining credit on one of our Amex Gold cards.

When we returned to the Holiday Inn Express at around 1 p.m., our room was ready. At check-in, I was offered a choice of 500 IHG points or a drink and food item as my welcome amenity. I took the food and drink.

We had a room with two queen beds, and it was a conventional Holiday Inn Express setup. There was plenty of space for two people, along with a television, desk and chair, storage, microwave and refrigerator. Each bed had four pillows. The room also had a proper work surface rather than trying to make one piece of furniture perform several jobs, and the refrigerator was a decent size rather than the tiny minibar-style units still found in some hotel rooms.

The bathroom was compact but included a walk-in shower with sliding glass doors, wall-mounted toiletries, an illuminated mirror and a reasonable amount of counter space.

There was one room problem. The safe wasn’t working. It displayed a message that appeared to relate to the battery, so I called the front desk shortly after check-in and was told maintenance would be informed. We left for the match and returned later that evening, but the safe had never been fixed. For a one-night stay it wasn’t worth pursuing again, although a reported safe that remains unusable is still a negative.

Breakfast is included at Holiday Inn Express, and the spread here was recognizable to anyone who has stayed at the brand before. During our stay, the hot choices included cheese omelets, scrambled eggs, bacon and turkey sausage. There were also apples, cereal, oatmeal, bagels, yogurt and the familiar Holiday Inn Express cinnamon rolls.

The bacon and cinnamon rolls appeared to be particularly popular and disappeared quickly, although items were being replenished. Coffee was available from the machines beside the breakfast area.

There was plenty of seating around the breakfast area. It was a perfectly adequate included breakfast before leaving the property.

This was where the booking was supposed to justify itself. The walk back after the match was fairly quick, although the precise time will depend on which stadium exit you use. The pedestrian route was easy enough to follow, particularly with so many other spectators making the same journey.

The route itself was less direct than it appears on a map. Some areas that looked like natural shortcuts were closed off for tailgating or organized barbecue setups, while other areas were fenced. Whether all of those restrictions are permanent or simply part of game-day operations, we couldn’t just cut directly through the parking areas toward the hotel.

Following the walking traffic was easy enough, and a substantial proportion of it was heading to the same place we ended up stopping: Horseshoe Casino.

We hadn’t planned to walk directly back to the hotel after the match. Instead, we stopped at Horseshoe again, gambled for a while and also came out slightly ahead.

We eventually ate at Fú Noodle House inside the casino. Having spent more than $20 per beer at the stadium, casino dining prices suddenly seemed entirely reasonable. More importantly, the stop changed the transportation equation.

By the time we left Horseshoe, plenty of people outside were ordering Ubers and other rides back to different parts of Baltimore. The immediate rush out of the stadium had already subsided. We and some other guests simply continued across the road to the Holiday Inn Express.

That exposed an option I hadn’t given enough weight to when writing our original Baltimore hotel guide. If your night ends when the match ends, the Holiday Inn Express remains an excellent logistical choice. You can walk back with the crowd and be finished with transportation for the night. But if you would be inclined to visit Horseshoe anyway, staying farther from the stadium becomes more practical. Walk to the casino with everyone else, have a drink or dinner, gamble for a while if that’s your thing, and order a ride once the immediate post-game rush has subsided. That’s a more workable exit strategy than trying to summon a car immediately outside a packed stadium.

The same location that makes the Holiday Inn Express useful for M&T Bank Stadium leaves it relatively weak for conventional dining. There isn’t a collection of restaurants immediately outside the hotel. For our one-night stay, Horseshoe filled that gap. We ate there at lunchtime while waiting for our room and returned for dinner after the match.

That worked particularly well because the casino ended up performing several jobs during the stay. It gave us somewhere to go while waiting for early check-in, provided the nearest practical dining choices, gave us something to do after the game and, inadvertently, provided a place to wait while the initial post-match transportation demand eased. Someone with no interest in the casino should take a different view. The Holiday Inn Express is exceptionally convenient for the stadium, but this isn’t a hotel I’d choose for its surrounding restaurant options.

The next morning we asked about late checkout and were offered noon as the latest option. That was sufficient for us. We were only moving across Baltimore to the Marriott Waterfront for the following night, so there was no reason to push for anything later. By then, the hotel had done what we’d asked of it: given us a comfortable place to sleep, breakfast in the morning and a straightforward walk back from the main reason we’d come to Baltimore.

The Holiday Inn Express Baltimore at the Stadiums did what I booked it to do. A room selling for $225 became a useful destination for an IHG 40,000-point free-night certificate. We got a comfortable two-queen room, included breakfast and, most importantly, a hotel we could reach on foot after the match rather than needing to deal with post-game transportation.

There were weaknesses. The room safe wasn’t repaired after we reported it, late checkout was limited to noon, and dining options immediately around the hotel are limited unless you’re happy using Horseshoe Casino. None would stop me using the hotel again for the same purpose.

The stay did, however, modify one conclusion from my original Baltimore planning. I’d placed considerable weight on staying within walking distance of M&T Bank Stadium because I didn’t want to deal with transportation alongside everyone else immediately after the match. Having now done it, I still think that’s the cleanest solution if you simply want to go back to your hotel.

What I hadn’t adequately considered was Horseshoe as an intermediate stop. It sits in the same general walking direction from the stadium, offers food, drinks and gambling, and gives the immediate post-game transportation rush time to settle. By the time we left, other spectators were ordering rides from outside the casino while we crossed the road to the Holiday Inn Express.

So I’d still put the HIX high on the list for anyone whose priority is getting back to a hotel on foot after an event at M&T Bank Stadium. But having actually made the trip, staying farther away no longer looks like quite the logistical mistake I once thought it might be.

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