The Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort is supposed to be one of Hilton’s largest properties and unfortunately it’s also one of the worst ones I’ve stayed in and I’ll tell you why..

Staff: D+

We give the staff a D+ for good reason. First our check in was horrible. The woman checking us in kept getting distracted by other clerks asking questions. I suspect she is either the supervisor or simply knew more than the others but she could never focus on one thing. Checking in shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes at best but 20 minutes later we were waiting for our room keys. Adding to our aggravation was the constant up-selling to larger suites or other services we didn’t want, need or ask for during our check in process. On top of all the fiasco, her computer system was down and she kept having to ferry from one terminal to another.

If this had been the only issue with staff we could simply shrug it off to a bad day, everyone has them but it didn’t stop there. Our daily room service wasn’t really service. While the beds were made, there was no attempt to check if the body wash was empty to refill it. Luckily we had our own body wash but for a room charging in excess of $300/night, we expect at least the soap to be refilled!

Entertainment: B-

The Tapa bar had a live band playing almost every night so at least there was some entertainment to be had on premises and there are tons of shopping just across the street from the hotel but the options did feel a bit light.

Services: Incomplete

We did not try any of the services aside from the beach and were glad to have towels offered but quite frankly many of the service were way over priced. Most meals for room service were in excess of $30 to $40+ so we opted to just walk down to the nearby restaurants and eat there.

Dining/Food: Incomplete

The food was overpriced. Breakfast will run you about $40 for eggs and toast and it’s not fantastic just over priced.

Infrastructure: D-

The infrastructure of the hotel is our biggest complaint and we’ll detail why:

1. Room had a musty moldy wet dog odor to it. We had read reviews on booking sites that this was a common complaint but we thought people were exaggerating, they were not.
2. Internet – I had to work from this hotel and heavily rely on internet to work remotely. Well the internet connection in our room was unstable. My VPN to the office kept dropping every few minute. I switched to my personal computer and suffered the same problem so it wasn’t a computer issue. The internet here just sucks.
3. Hot water – It’s nice to take a shower with hot water but if you want hot water you need to shower early in the morning or late at night because the whole complex seems to be hooked up to one 40 gallon water heater. We called to complain and maintenance said they didn’t have the part to fix the hot water so our room was changed to another floor. One of our traveling companions booked in another room also lost hot water at some point.
4. In Room Desk – As I mentioned, I needed internet to work from my hotel room so while I was delighted to have a desk and chair in the room there was nowhere to plug my laptop into without unplugging the lamp. The other outlet was taken by some contraption that I dared not unplug for fear of bringing down the power grid at the hotel.
5. Room is dated – Not really a big deal for us but for the price we pay we would have liked to have a nice more modern hotel room with adequate power outlets that included USB for charging our phones. It is beyond me why a hotel like this doesn’t offer USB infrastructure for cell phones and tables that everyone now carries. Power at the desk is a no-brainer except for Hilton.
6. No spare blanket – You would expect a room with two queen beds might have a spare blanket but not at the Hilton where saving a penny is great as long as it’s an inconvenience to your customer.
7. Parking – There is self parking for a whopping $68/day but you better get there early or you may not have a space!
8. Roads – The whole area has too many cars and quite frankly, we would prefer if the city/county/state would simply turn most of Honolulu Waikiki beach into a pedestrian zone and build elevated trains to move people around. The horrible traffic alone is enough to keep us out of Honolulu and this hotel for a long while. Please get rid of the cars!
9. TV – The room features a nice TV so when we wanted to catch up on the news it was surprising to see that the TV guide button listed a guide with no useful information. You can’t make this stuff up.

Overall Grade: ???

We really don’t know how to grade this hotel but we are sure that we won’t ever return to it. We normally stay at the Sheraton down the road but wanted to try something different on this trip and give Hilton the opportunity to earn our loyalty but after this experience we’ll return to Marriott on our next trip out here.

Categories: Hawaii
Comments Off on Review – Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort