I went to New York and stayed at the New York Hilton on 1335 Avenue of the Americas. Hotels.com has since been pestering me for a review. However, when I went to hit submit it said, please limit your review to 1500 characters. Right, because I am going to go back and count how many characters I have entered, and then try to groom the posting to fit within that limit.
Why not offer a counter? I mean we are talking HTML5 and javascript simple capabilities. Anyway, so their site stinks for posting reviews, but only last week did I discover for the second time their site stinks for actually making hotel reservations.
First of all, HOTELS.COM which is expedia sent the reservations (2 of them) to the hotel but only one of them seem to have been “processed”. Which is why you must ALWAYS verify your reservation with the hotel because HOTELS.COM who is in the business of making hotel reservations isn’t very good at making hotel reservations.
Upon arriving we were told that only one room reservation existed, and it wasn’t ready to be given to us. Then we spent 50 minutes on the phone with Hotels.Com who finally did their job correctly, then magically both rooms were ready to be occupied.
We went up and tried the first room and it worked just fine, the other one kept giving us a yellow light when we put in the key. We got new keys, those didn’t work. So they told us they had to send maintenance up. We just dropped our stuff in the first room and left. Eventually they fixed it.
Not the Hotel’s fault, but just be aware that in front of and surrounding the hotel on Saturday nights is “drive up your piece of crap car, open the hood and doors, and play loud crappy music.” It goes on until about 2am. I fell asleep long before 2am, but that’s when the front desk guy said they would end.
We had 2 towels in our bathroom, I called down for more, they never arrived (Friday, first day). The person who tidied up the room on Friday was kind enough to leave an extra towel.
The second day they had a SWARM of 14-16 year old Italian girls. The hotel staff did a good job of just managing them, didn’t really impact us.
The lobby bathrooms were clean, the bathroom in the room was ok. The paint was peeling from above the shower, the drain on the floor had some SEVERE rust stains around it. Nothing to prevent me from taking a hot shower, but just stuff I would have touched up had I owned the place.
All the hotel staff seemed friendly, so that’s about it.
If I had to stay at the Hilton New York. 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York, 10019, USA again I would verify my reservation if booked through Hotels.Com and I would request a room on the back side or away from the loud car people if I was going to be there over the weekend.
P.S. This is the second time that Hotels.Com forgot or didn’t follow up with the hotel when I was travelling to New York. They seem to have real troubles booking their room. Bottom line, verify they are actually doing their job, or just book with the hotel directly to ensure satisfaction.
P.P.S. At no time (either instance) did Hotels.Com ever send me a “wow, are we sorry we screwed up” e-mail, letter, box of candy, free tickets to a show, etc. I guess this is just how they do business. And if anyone at Hotels.Com asks if they were made aware of the issue, well I was on the phone for 50 minutes, the DAY of my reservation. That should tell you something.