Travel The World

LAX Airport Hilton and Palmer House ... never again, never again

tgw

Stayed at the Hilton Towers in San Francisco a couple years ago, and I was scared that the ceiling in my room was going to fall in on me. Yikes!

PCheng

Palmer House Hilton.

I can stand the small room and dated furniture. I don't mind the dirty bathroom and peeling wall papers. Hell, I can even overlook the fact that they screwed up my room type request and refused me admission to lounge even when I am Gold. But when the receptionist has the nerve to demand a 25 dollar fee for having a second guest in room (a child none the less), that is just too much.

missdona

I stay at the Palmer House about two nights a week. Those "studio" rooms are really unbearable. The last time I was assigned one, I asked for a room change and was granted one without inicident.

Once I achieved Gold, I've always been placed on one of the two exceutive floors. Their two-double-bed-two-bathroom Exec rooms are really, really lovely. If I book my reservation through the Hilton website (as opposed to the corporate travel agent), I see approval for the upgrade in advance of my check in. I've also found the Executive concierges to be extremely helpful and accomodating.

BigLar

Cool! How do you do that? I've been booking through the website for years, and I put a request for upgrade in the little text box, but I never know if I got one until checkin.

Where does the upgrade status show?

stc

Why did you think it was going to fall? IMHO, that (SF Hilton & Towers) is one of the best Hiltons.

stc

The room type changes from what you originally booked to what you have been upgraded to.

missdona

I put the request in the notes and make the reservation for "room selected at check-in." A couple of days before, it magically changes. I imagine the person in charge of room selection takes care of this.

My reservation for tomorrow is now for a "2 double beds towers room" thanks (very much) to the authority of some unknown person at the Palmer House.

They also have online check in for Golds and Diamonds. The day before you can print out your check-in paperwork with a confirmed room number. If you don't like the one they chose for you, you can choose from the available room types and floors.

Moderator2

Embassy Suites - Downtown Cleveland... real dump, in a nasty neighborhood

• At check in - 4pm, three people "working". One person being helped, with two of us in line. One employee was just standing around and staring. No interest in assisting another guest. Second person answering the phone that rings continuously. Finally the phone person asks me if She can help. Unfortunately she doesn't have the skills to really check me in. Can't figure out how to enter my UA number. I ask if there is an upgraded room "available for a Diamond", another staffer indicates without looking up that they are soldout so the answer is no.
• Elevators are very slow. At 5pm one day only one of the three is working. Per the valet on the ground floor, the others are being used "to move mattresses from floor to floor"
• The hotel has its entrance on a marginally safe (and torn-up) street, but the actual lobby is on the fifth floor. A number of times I entered an there was no hotel people on the ground floor. Anyone could walk in off the street and take the elevator (if functional) to any floor. There are a lot of homeless people in the neighborhood, and a bus station within two blocks.
• The public rooms (front entrance, check-in area, elevator, for example) are quite beat up. Definitely in need of sprucing up. The room I'm in looked fairly new though, as did the hallway on my floor.
• Called the front desk to ask about high speed wireless access, which I heard someone say was available. Asked what the SSID was. Employee put me on hold and never came back.
• Did a scan and by process of elimination figured out which wireless network was the hotel's. The $10/day service went down every two minutes consistently one night. I had to close me browser and reaccess IE to get any surfing done. However the folllowing morning it worked fine. The "neighborhood" open systems seemed to be better bets!
• Two mornings there was no orange juice available in the breakfast room.
• At 6:15am loud construction began on the street in front of the building. Glad I like to get up early
• No Diamond amenity in the room, not even a 25 cent bottle of water. There was a personalized welcoming letter though.
• Two evenings there were massive clear trash bags sitting in the hallway of my floor. Looks like this was stuff left by housekeeping and someone else was suppose to drag it elsewhere, and never did. Really, really tacky
• My last morning, the phones in my room did not work. You could not dial inside the hotel or externally. Fast busy signal.
• The towel rack came crashing down as I was grabbing a towel exiting the shower.
• No shampoo in the room the final morning

Now having said all this, upon the desk clerk asking about my stay at check-out, she did not hesitate to unilaterally adjust my bill seriously downward as I rattled off the problems. Nice action on her part.

JDiver

The problem with SF Hilton is there is an incredibly varied array of accommodations. If one has a lower-priced booking and there's, say, a medical convention with assorted hospitality rooms, etc. sold, you get to see some of the less, ahem, desirable rooms, and deal with a packed-to-the-ceiling Executive Lounge filled with conventioneers resembling nothing more or less than a school of starved piranhas at a slaughter.

bcl00

Hilton Southbury, CT.

I stayed here for a few weeks and moved to a Hampton Inn. The hotel is an old ramada inn. The whole property feels old and has not been updated in quite a few years. The pool and hot tub are crappy, the hot tub is more like a luke warm tub. The gym is a joke, broken equipment. The entire place had an odd smell to it that I couldn't quite identify. The cable lineup had like 20 channels but there were 3 of like the same 4 channels (i.e. the Hartford NBC, NY NBC, and New Haven NBC). They did this for NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and I believe the UPN channels. So i had like 5 channels to choose from. The restaurant was lousy and the room service took like an hour to have it delivered cold. I just had an overall feeling of depression and homesickness in this hotel. I hated being there. I could go on all night.

ontherun

You can rejoice, it is no longer a Hampton.

In the spirit of the thread, the Miami Airport Doubletree, the I-30 Westside Hampton in Ft. Worth and it's been a year or two, but the Hampton Inn in Orlando on the corner of International Drive and Sand Lake are two that I will never stay in again.

ontherun
this week in New Mexico

NJUPINTHEAIR

This thread is illustrative of the problem with Hilton properties -- your experience very much varies with the room that you are placed in - there is no consistency within the hotel, let alone across the brand!!

Canarsie

Here is a vote for the Hampton Inn in Hades...

...er — I mean, Hays, Kansas...

Cholula

The Hampton Inn in Bangor, Maine has truly seen it's better days.
But on the other hand, the staff was superb on my recent involuntary stay. I was stuck there, without a car, when a flight was canceled and the staff ran me around town in their van so I could pick up some odds and ends.