Booked an award stay & paid stay 2/14 through 2/18 at the Hilton Clearwater Beach Resort, this was my first use of points on a stay, so two reservations were booked, the first three nights of the stay were used for the points (40K per night) and the last night was a paid stay ($270/night). I had to call Hilton as this type of stay cannot be booked online, at least that’s what the agent told me, but I am assuming that I could have booked the two stays separately online. I booked this hotel purposely for its location, amenities, and since most of my stays are at HGI’s and HI’s, I wanted to try a more upscale resort, plus bringing the gf for Valentine’s Day I wanted to show her what all my travel adds up to!

We arrived about noon on Wednesday, when you check-in you have to leave your car & keys with the valet, I wasn’t too crazy about that, especially since I had just bought a new Garmin c550 GPS that was still hooked up, but since they were going to leave my card right there I didn’t mind. The Lobby is on the second floor so you have to either take the elevator up one level or go up the stairs, the hotel on the outside is pretty old and beat up, but inside it was pleasant, clean, and very well taken care of. There is a separate check-in lane for HH members, but since there was no one in line we proceeded right up to the counter where we were greeted by the Day Manager. He greeted me by name, told me he was expecting me, and thanked me for my business. I handed over my award certificate and explained my stay, he was very helpful, courteous, and explained the hotel in detail. Because it was only 11am the room he was going to put us is, 916 (top floor), was not available, which was going to be a larger than a standard room with a view facing south, which would overlook the hotel pools and the gulf, we didn’t want to wait a few hours for it to be ready so he offered us 917, which would have a view facing north, overlooking the parking areas and the gulf. We took the room as we had a 3pm reservation at the Island Way Grill for dinner and wanted to get ready. Basically it was a standard room, 2 queen beds, with the balcony (which I believe all the rooms have), and the view. Outside of the newer bathroom amenities, the newer beds, the room was OK in my opinion, the balcony could have used a paint job, and there are monstrous condos being built next to the hotel so there is a lot of construction going on, not terribly noisy but there are a lot of huge cranes working.

We received breakfast coupons for the restaurant each morning which got us the continental, which was fruit and pastries, or you, can use those towards the full hot breakfast, $5 off the full $16.95 price making it $11.95. There is a restaurant and a bar in the hotel, and a bar outside on the beach. Parking costs you $5.83/day for self, with two lots on the property. Never ha d a problem finding space, though I bet in the summer the lots would be full, or you can pay $8.83/day for valet and your car gets parked in the garage. There are two pools and a sauna outside, since the weather last week was only on the high 50’s and low 60’s, we didn’t use either of them. The best part about the hotel is the beach access, although the weather was a bit colder last week, we could walk right out the back of the hotel and onto the beach where there are miles of white sand, Pier 60, which is a pier that you can walk out on a couple hundred feet or so on, hunt for sea shells, and we watched some amazing sunsets. In the summer you can rent beach cabanas for $25/day. There are also bicycle (actually adult tricycles) taxis for free (not including tip).

The hotel was pretty quiet at night, no complaints there, got the USA Today each morning, but the first couple of nights we could hear this kind of high pitched squealing noise on and off, I walked out of the room several times to see if it was a child or something, we couldn’t figure out until the last night that our room was right next to the elevator shaft (duh!)And the noises were the elevator cables going up and down, now I have in my HH profile that I prefer a room AWAY FROM THE ELEVATOR, but my fault for not figuring it out sooner.

When Saturday came around, our last night and my paid stay, I went to the front desk to make sure that since that was going to be our paid night there were no issues or glitches. We were able to keep the same room, they re-issued us the same keys for the same room (the keys would have been shut off at 11am), and made another copy of my cc. I was going to ask for an upgrade to a better room but we had an early flight the next morning so not worth it to moving everything.

For my award stay I was only billed for three nights of parking and room service, we ordered tea one night ($11), and for my paid stay on Saturday night we were billed one night of parking and the room rate, $270, plus tax totaling $300 – overpriced in my opinion, but I know you are paying for location and amenities. All in all a good stay but again overpriced , next time we go I am looking at possibly the Doubletree, a bit south of Clearwater towards St. Pete ($130/night).

My first Hilton trip report – any comments welcome!