I've stayed in approx 25 IHG Properties in the last 18 months or so. 5 of them would have been in the UK and I must admit the UK standards are certainly lower than what I have found in Mainland Europe for the most part.
If I was ranking all the places I visited in the last 18 months from 1-25, I would:
- Put one hotel in Top 10
- Put one hotel at about number 15
- The other 3 would be in the bottom 5.
So I'd agree with what you are saying, HIE in particular is much poorer in the UK compared to what you find in Mainland Europe, it's a world apart from what I see in other countries who simply seem to care more and they do the minimum possible for breakfast.
Maintenance also seems bad in comparison overall, for example there's one HIE I go into in Central Europe and another that I stayed in occasionally for stopovers for work in UK, they were both built around the same year and same room generation, one looks brand new and everything works perfectly and the other one looks like management don't care. Even in Indigo and Crowne Plaza properties I've seen a difference.
Maybe I'm unlucky but overall I find the hotels outside the UK generally appear to be more tightly adhering to brand standards and you get a consistent experience, whereas in the UK often hotels are not being so strict on that and feel more disjointed and like a loose franchise of IHG where outside they appear to be more tightly integrated to IHG even though at the end of the day they are pretty much all franchised.