Just completed a 3 night stay here.



The hotel is currently under deep renovation which it desperately needs. At present the bottom half of guest room floors are closed for renovation - the artists impressions imply it will be a Hilton Singapore Orchard style refurbishment which looks promising. From what I can see of the Kuching hotel market this will make the Hilton the most modern looking hotel in the city! It's worth noting there was no noise from the refurbishment that I heard - although I was on the highest floor so probably no great surprise.

The hotel has already had some nice refurbishments to the lobby and buffet restaurant.

I booked a standard king room and was upgraded to a King Executive Suite on the 13th floor. They're doing some interim refreshments to the higher floor guest rooms before they're gutted next year- as the corridor and room had a strong paint smell. Some of the rooms on our floor were in a state of painting with protective paper sheets/masking in the entrances and covering the doors.

The suite we were given opened up into a living room with the bedroom and bathroom off in another room. There was a welcome tray of cookies and nuts.




The rooms have probably had a refurbishment in the last 10 years I'm guessing, so they're not awful but beyond the stage of light refurbishment. The rooms need guttiing. It kinda reminded me of a tired Hilton in the US and UK. The bathroom was especially tired - shower pressure was good though.




Our room had a great view of the Sarawak parliament building, the bridge and river.




We did have a few issues with the room which I've fed back to the hotel:

• There was a toothpick and toothpaste cap in the bathroom from the previous guest. I told the FD who sent housekeeping up to go over the room again.
• The AC rattled quite loudly which was a sleep distraction. It was one of those noises you could zone out on eventually but was all you could hear when trying to get to sleep.
• The WiFi signal was weak - I could barely get a connection in the bedroom and it was so weak it was unusable. I had to use my mobile phone placed in the living room as a personal hotspot between the hotel WiFi network and my tablet in the bedroom. Forget about having any WiFi in the bathroom.

There is a lounge which is open for most of the day. It serves breakfast but we took it in the restaurant. The lounge serves cakes and finger sandwiches between 1500-1700 and hot canapés/alcohol between 1700-1900. The canapés usually consisted of 3 typical deep fried style things and noodles. There were also small desserts and cheese. Soft drinks and tea/coffee were available throughout the day. It would be better if the drinks were self serve because the staff are swamped in the lounge when it's busy and they kept forgetting drinks.






Breakfast was great - nice variety and the options changed each day. Like other Hiltons in Malaysia, they follow the "Makan Kitchen" brand/concept and have buffet stations with Malay, Chinese and Indian food. The chef in charge of breakfast was present within the restaurant each day and kindly obliged my request for specially made cheese roti.

I used the pool twice - again it was fine but it needs refurbishing.




Overall not a bad stay - I'd like to go back and try it after the refurbishment as I think it'd be much better but I doubt I'll have any need or desire to return to Kuching. Staff were all very friendly and pleasant.