Oceana Santa Monica LXR {US-CA}
Don't see a thread on this new property (open approx 5 months) so here goes.
Had a Saturday overnight in LA, and decided to burn an Amex free night cert here. Cheapest cash rooms were going for $618. Spoiler alert: I'd NEVER pay that much to stay here.
Location on Ocean Avenue, between Montana and Idaho, overlooking Palisades Park, is great. It's a three story building, older construction, which Hilton remodeled and reflagged. Rooms are built around a central courtyard, where the smallish pool is located. There's only one very slow elevator, and this is not adequate given the number of rooms and the lack of easy stairway access. Hilton should have put in another elevator when they remodeled.
There's a nice open space (with heaters) on the third floor overlooking Palisades Park and out to the Ocean, called the "Sunset Terrace." About the nicest feature of the property IMO. Pool was super crowded with kids. Pretty loud and I suspect not the crowd the property was hoping for.
On arrival, the extraordinarily insincere fda Lily told us we'd been assigned to a ground floor base level room (Oceana King), I asked about a Diamond upgrade; she said they were "pretty full" and nothing was available. This statement was contradicted by the app, which showed four types of higher level rooms available for sale. She then said not to worry, the room assigned was "one of her favorites." I asked why that was and she could give no explanation. After further discussion, she involved her colleague, who also declined any upgrade, but moved us the same room type, second floor.
The room itself was very dark and clearly less than the advertised 500 sq ft. View was of the adjacent condos about 8 feet away. Small balcony with one chair. No desk of any kind. Decor was brand new and pretty nice. Our bellman Lenny (nice guy) started describing the hotel's iPad-based communication system, and then said "oh wait, this is one of the rooms that doesn't have those."
There was also no coffee maker. I asked at front desk and was told by Lily they had been "removed from the rooms due to covid requirements." I called bs, having stayed in dozens of hotels over the past year with in-room coffee. Lily said a coffee maker would be brought to the room. A Nespresso machine was duly delivered, but without coffee. I called and asked for capsules, which were brought up about 30 minutes later. When i went to set up the machine, I saw it had no water reservoir. Called front desk again, they brought up a new machine with a reservoir 30 minutes after that. Remember, this is supposedly a $600+ per night "luxury" hotel.
Biggest issue we had with the room (apart from lack of any desk or any place to eat takeout food) was noise. The walls are paper thin. We had loud music from the adjacent room until about 11 pm. Front desk acknowledged the problem, but wouldn't do anything about it.
Breakfast at Sandpiper (we ate at a table by the pool) was extremely slow and disorganized. It took about 20 minutes to get any service at all, 40 minutes to order, and an hour to get our food. The food was actually quite good. Diamond benefit is a $22 per person credit (no tax or gratuity included). They add a 20% tip to all checks. Our tab was around $65.
"Disorganized" describes the service here overall. The two times we called down to have our car brought up, the message was not conveyed to the valets. The property is also understaffed, which meant calls to the front desk mostly went unanswered.
Overall, a pretty disappointing stay. If I had paid $618 I'd be super pissed. I'd certainly not recommend anyone spend anywhere close to that to stay here, as it is a "luxury" property in name only.