kpbadger

Stayed here 1 Sunday->Monday night in January 2016 - diamond member. Here is a summary of my experience.

I reserved a AAA rate that was less than $100/night. The going award rate was 40,000 points for this night, obviously not a good redemption at that price point.

The day before check-in, OLCI was showing regular rooms, nothing with a bay view. The morning of check-in, OLCI showed an upgrade to a bay view room. Since I was traveling with my son who likes planes, I changed to room 707 which is one of 4 rooms (X07-X10) on the end that faces directly at the airport. There was no availability on the top floor 8. Floor 7 was also marked as HHonors Floor, and there were little gold signs next to each room for HHonors Room.

Upon check-in, I was recognized as a Diamond member. The front desk gave me breakfast vouchers for myself, my wife, and my son without me even saying anything. This was above and beyond, and appreciated. The two bottles of water were waiting for us in the room. And yes, warm cookies for all. I found the front desk to be friendly and accommodating.

I'm not a good judge of "outdatedness" when it comes to rooms, but the one thing I noticed immediately was the lack of outlets near the bed. One of the lamps had one outlet and the other lamp had none. There was an extension cord on the floor under the bed with additional outlets. The room was clean. The time on the clock was wrong by about 4 hours though, oops...

Throughout the evening hours we did hear plane noise occasionally, which was mostly planes revving their engines about to take off on the northbound runway. This would have been enough noise to awaken a light sleeper. We watched several planes land and did not hear any noise from these. We did not hear any noise from the hallway, although our room was really tucked away in a corner.

Breakfast for diamonds is a full buffet at the restaurant on the first floor. The selection there was a limited amount of fruit (honeydew, grapes, apples, bananas; NO cantaloupe, berries, or pineapple), pastries, bread, oatmeal, etc. Hot items were scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, french toast, and potatoes. Juice and coffee had to be ordered from the server. Upon advice from this thread we asked about (and were granted) omelets, although there was no signage or advertisement of the availability of the same. The sausages were awful rubber, the bacon was good, and the omelets were enjoyable. To me the overall quality of the buffet was similar to if not slightly below a typical HGI, notwithstanding the omelets.

One very handy thing about this hotel was that the shuttle ran every 15 minutes, which is more frequent than any other HHonors SFO property I have stayed at thus far. No reservations were necessary, and the shuttle is one of the larger Bauer luxury vans. It serves two hotels, the other being the Red Roof Inn next door.

Overall, there are pros (frequency of shuttle, omelets) and cons (quality of buffet items, limited outlets, no lounge). I didn't come away with a strong preference comparing the Doubletree vs. the nearby Hilton (nice lounge, easily walkable to Kincaid's restaurant, less frequent shuttle). I'd happily stay at either again.