Hotel Holiday Inn Express a Santa Cruz

We stayed at this facility on March 10, originally with the intention of staying for one night only. The following morning, we decided to stay on for an additional evening. I went down to the desk at 11:10am on March 11, and the young woman behind the counter said that we should have informed them of our intentions ten minutes earlier (before check-out time at 11:00) and that as a result she could not offer us the room we were in. I asked her why, since the hotel seemed to me to be largely empty. In fact, during our conversation, she mentioned that there were only twenty new bookings for that evening. She then said that we needed to leave because the room needed to be cleaned, even though I assured her that we did not need it to be cleaned. I asked to speak to her supervisor, and she said that the supervisor was “on lunch” and again insisted that we leave the room. I told her that we would not leave the room until she clarified with her supervisor whether we could stay in the same room. She called her supervisor who said that it would, in fact, be possible to stay in the same room. I asked the young woman if she needed anything further, and I was then told that everything had been arranged, and we were all set for the additional night. At 1:25pm that afternoon, we received a phone call from a new supervisor -evidently after a shift change- who said that we needed to immediately check out of the room we were in. I said that our stay had been cleared with the previous supervisor. She said that she was the supervisor now, and therefore we had to leave. I said that I would not leave until she communicated with the earlier supervisor about the misunderstanding. She said that if we did not check out of the room, she would call the police who would arrive in 10 minutes. We promptly packed our belongings and gave our key cards to the front desk. Later that afternoon, the IHG (as well as Booking.com and Expedia) website advertised availability for that night of the type of room we had just vacated. All that needs to be added to this strange narrative is that we are IHG members, and have never such a bad experience in any of our stays at an IHG hotel.