Originally Posted by GagaPilot

I'll start by saying I have stayed at the Carte multiple times in the past for work reasons. These stays were always booked through my company's hotel service, API. Always had great experiences. So, when I made plans to visit San Diego for a leisure trip, the Carte was my first choice. I booked online directly through Hilton. The rate was quite steep, $450/night for a king high floor city view room. For 2 nights with taxes/fees it was going to be around $1100. The Carte is nice, but not sure if it's worth that much. So, I burned some points to get the rate down to about $275 for both nights.

Published check in time for the hotel was 4 PM. We arrived on a morning flight and got to the hotel around 11 AM. We fully expected our room to not be ready yet, but were hoping to drop a bag off. Surprisingly, they had one room ready on the 13th floor just a couple doors down from the one we had pre-selected. We happily accepted it and headed up to our room.

However, as soon as we opened the door to the room, we were met with an extremely foul smell. We should have turned around immediately and went back downstairs. However we discovered the air to the room was completely off, and decided to try running it to see if that cleared the smell. After a few minutes it helped somewhat and my husband went to hop in the shower. As I started to unpack a bit I noticed the first 2-3 feet of carpet leading from the tiled entryway to the bedroom was soaking wet! I touched the carpet and realized that's where the sour smell was coming from. About this time I heard the shower cut off, which was odd for my husband to have taken such a short shower. When I went to investigate I could tell that the shower was about to overflow. It was a stand-only shower with about a 2" barrier between the floor and top of the shower surface. As he waited for it drain down to continue using it, we began to realize what had happened. The previous guest must have flooded the bathroom/entryway that caused the carpet to become wet.

We should have again gone back down to the front desk and explained the situation. But we decided to try and deal with it as best we could. My husband finished his shower quickly and we laid down for a quick power nap as we had an afternoon of activities planned. We left the room with the AC on high trying to dry the carpet as best as possible.

When we returned that afternoon the smell was no better. I went back down to the lobby and explained the situation to the front desk. The lady working looked at me as if I was crazy and/or making it up. However as I was explaining it the man who checked us in immediately appeared and profusely apologized and said they would send housekeeping up. At this point I realized he knew about the room beforehand when he checked us in. It was obvious by how quickly he set in motion to try and resolve this.

Housekeeping arrived and the worker immediately apologized and said there was no way they could make this better for us quickly enough for us to stay in the room, and that it was embarrassing we were assigned this room, and he would notify the front desk to get us another room. After maybe 20 minutes, we had keys to a room on the 11th floor and all was well.

From there onwards the stay was great. Very clean room, friendly staff, and a great dinner at Above Ash Social. The hotel charges a $60 destination fee, but if you dine at the property that fee is returned as a credit. No issues claiming this credit. We had a great rest of our stay.

So in summary once we got the room situation settled the Carte was great as always. We should have corrected the issue sooner, and that is on us. However the original room should have been placed out of service. My husband's suspicion is that since we used points, we were assigned such a poor room. He used to work for another Hilton property and said that it is very common for the cheaper the rate paid, the worse room to be assigned. Something to keep in mind for future stays.