So, when you hear the name Hilton Hotel, you think quality, class and a little bit of luxury. The name is synonymous with a guilty pleasure.
But not for us.
Troy arrived at the Hilton in downtown SLC on July 2nd and was put in a room that didn’t have a working AC. Seriously? He has stayed in Hilton hotels so much that he has attained Diamond Status, but they put him in a room without a working AC? In the middle of July?
That issue was solved easily enough. He called the front desk and they sent someone up to fix it. Though, you’d think they would have moved him to a better room because of the issue.
Come to think of it, when we stayed in a Hilton Hotel in Kuala Lumpur for two weeks, the AC in that room didn’t work, either. We had someone up there multiple times to fix it and they wouldn’t let us change rooms, either.
Anyways, back to this stay.
Troy used his Hilton Rewards points for this stay and somehow that immediately dropped him from Diamond Status. He couldn’t figure out why the staff was being so dismissive and not taking care of him until he discovered the downgrade. He said he can tell a total difference between how he was treated before they dropped him from Diamond Status and now. He said the staff is less friendly and less attentive.
Aside from the staff not being as high of quality as they were when he was Diamond Status, there were no issues on the 3rd or 4th, but on the 5th, no housekeeping was done. He had to call the front desk after returning from a day with his family to get someone to come clean his room and someone was sent up shortly after to do what they should have done that morning.
The next day? Same problem. I showed up at 8am on the 6th and we left to spend the morning with his family. When we returned to the room at 2:30, no housekeeping. Again! I called the front desk to ask if they had instituted an every-other-day cleaning policy, but the gentleman at the front desk assured me they cleaned the rooms every day. When I told him our room hadn’t been cleaned and that it hadn’t been cleaned yesterday, either, he told me someone would be right up to clean the room. I told him we were going to take a nap and would call when we were leaving to let them know they could come up.
15 minutes later, when I was almost asleep, a lady knocks on the door and announces, “Housekeeping!” Troy went to the door and told her we were sleeping and to come back about 5:30 because we’d be gone then.
Guess what happened about an hour later? This time, the lady didn’t even bother to announce herself before opening the door. She knocked as she was opening the door and simultaneously announcing herself. She got the door halfway open before noticing we were both in our beds, made an exclamation of surprise and closed the door really fast. By the time I got to the door to stop her and talk to her (to tell her not to come back until 5:30……again), she was gone.
This has been very frustrating because I have a really bad headache and Troy isn’t feeling well, either. We both thought we could come back to the hotel and rest for a little bit before rejoining his family for dinner, but the staff at this hotel has made that very difficult. Neither one of us feels rested and my headache has gotten worse. This stay at the Hilton has been a very negative experience. We will definitely not be staying at this location again and will seriously consider other options before choosing to stay at another Hilton.
If you’ve had a negative hotel experience, share it in the comments below. I’d like to hear what happened and if you were able to get any resolution.
**UPDATE** 7-6-14 HiltonHelp on Twitter contacted me to get our hotel confirmation number and contact information. Once I provided that, they said they would send a copy of it to the hotel we stayed in. No mention of “I’m sorry you had a negative experience” or anything of the kind.
**UPDATE** 7-7-14 We had a rough sleep last night. The AC quit working, again, around 11pm and didn’t start working (on its own) until about 5am, which is an hour before we got up. We didn’t call the front desk because we were checking out this morning and didn’t want to deal with the front desk people anymore. We were able to sleep a bit, but it was quite warm in the room. We are very happy to be back home and both took very long naps shortly after arriving at our house.
I will say, though, that their checkout process is easy. We just sign the bill and slip it into a marked drop box on the way out. We liked not having to deal with the staff again.
**UPDATE** 7-10-14 Yesterday, the general manager of the Hilton Salt Lake City Center location (which I have been calling the Downtown SLC location) emailed us and apologized for the difficulties we had during our stay. He offered a partial refund along with some Hilton Reward points as a token of his and his hotel’s sincerity. The general manager promised that they normally have very high standards of housekeeping (in regards to both noticing the broken AC and the whole debacle of our room getting cleaned) and that what happened during our stay was an anomaly, but that he would definitely be discussing it with the housekeeping supervisor to ensure that it does not happen to any other guests in the future.
We are very satisfied with this outcome and are quite happy they did more than we expected. We had thought they MIGHT send an apology email and offer some Hilton Rewards points, but the partial refund was quite unexpected. We feel that the general manager is sincere in his statement of their standard of care towards their guests and have decided that we will give this location another try in the future.
