I just finished a four night stay at this hotel. Dating back to the posts in 2008 in this thread they all seem still relevant good assessments and advice from my POV. I booked a two queen bed corner room with a private patio. I was assigned room 1051 which is the executive/top floor. The room was not a suite, however it was spacious. The private patio was almost as large as the room itself. The room had floor to ceiling windows throughout the living area with an excellent view of the city, beach and bay. The front desk staff all spoke good English as did the room service host. The executive lounge was nice, never the least bit crowded during my stay. Breakfast included some hot dishes and continental fare. They kept the refrigerators stocked with soft drinks all day, and had alcohol in the evenings except this past weekend which was some type of observed religious holiday. Although I did not sample the evening dinner options in the Exec room, they looked appealing. All the staff were extremely cheerful and friendly.
The hotel has a business relationship with a couple tour guide operators that we used during our stay. The first was a four hour tour that was a combination of riding on a Chiva Bus and plenty of walking. There was an older couple from the hotel visiting from NY on the same tour from the hotel. We were the only four people on the tour bus that were Americans and did not speak Spanish. The rest of the folks all from Latin America or Spain. Our tour guide was bilingual and the tour was fantastic. They took us to all the historic tourists destinations and explained the history of the city and the sites we visited. The second was to a private island beach in the Caribbean where we spent 5 hours that included a buffet lunch and involved a 1 hour boat ride to get there. The demographic makeup was the same as the other, very welcome from my perspective as a change up, since I had been on so many tours with predominately other Americans in the past. In both tours we were picked up and dropped off at the hotel.
This was my first trip to Columbia or South America, as others have pointed out this is not like Costa Rica or most of the Caribbean Islands. Americans here definitely made up a extremely small numbers of the visitors I encountered at the hotel and while out and about. The vast majority of folks I encountered were Latin American and could not have been more friendly.
If I was to go back to Cartagena, This would be my first choice again, since I am earning HH points faster than I can burn them. The Hilton is at the end of a peninsula, the pools were great and the view/area better from my POV then the Hampton Inn a 1/4 mile away and located in the city.
If money is no object to you, as others have recommended a stay at one of the boutique hotels in the Walled City will likely provide you a better experience to your liking. I did not mind paying the $4 cab fare to and back from there to the hotel, and pocket the difference in hotel price which for me was just points.