"Zero Stars Wasn't An Option."
Overall Score1.0/ 5
We stayed at the Grand Waikikian March 31 thru April 6. I can honestly say this was by far the most horrible experience I have ever had. The problems started almost the second we got to our room. The room we booked was supposed to have three beds and it only had two. So we called down and explained that we didn't get the room we asked for and would you please try to move us to another room. Staff on the phone said he would look for another room and call back. A full hour passes and finally he calls back to say he can't move me and we're basically out of luck. When we booked the hotel they stated it was only at 50% capacity due to COVID, so how were they out of rooms if that was the case? So, then I asked for a roll away bed and he said ?We don't provide rollaway beds here.? Great. Thanks for your help. I had to get a Lyft to Wal Mart to buy an inflatable mattress (the last one left in the store) for one kid and foam bed padding for another kid (cuz no more mattresses) to accommodate the kids. At this point kids are getting hungry and we start looking around for food. What we didn't know when we booked the hotel is that all of the restaurants in the hotels and most in the village were closed due to COVID (this may sound reasonable, except that there was no clear communication ahead of time about what is closed and what is opened and the Grand Hawaiian Center area about 1.5 miles away was fully operational with countless restaurants and stores, so we had no reason to believe that the Hilton Village would be so restrictive). All of a sudden, we realized we couldn't find any food on the grounds. There were three restaurants serving four hotels in the village and no room service. The pool onsite only had one entrance open some kind of COVID protocol. But what it actually did was create a bottle neck so that you would inevitably come into contact with MORE people, since everyone was entering and exiting through ONE door. And, although the had a good mask policy inside the hotel, all rules went out the window at the pool. No mask enforcement for those outside the pool, no capacity limits for the pool area, nothing. And speaking of capacity, it quickly became clear that they didn't stop at 50% capacity when they booked their rooms. In fact, it seemed mighty clear that they just booked all the rooms and didn't bother to hire more staff to compensate. The check in line the next morning spilled out into the driveway with only two people working the front desk we heard it was about an hour wait or more. My wife had misplaced her key and asked for another they said she would have to wait in that line to get one. Nope. The towel stations at the pool and lagoon ran out of towels for three days in a row and just started turning people away. If you called down to the front desk to request something you may or may not get it One of our comforters had a hole in it and was spewing out down feathers (our son is allergic), so we requested another. It never came. Room cleaning was only once a week (fine by us), but when we put trash bags out for pick up they would sit in the hallway for 24 hours. The wait for coffee at 6am in the village (two coffee shops were open in the four hotel vicinity) was one hour. It was blatantly obvious that the hotel was greedy enough to book out all their rooms when they saw the demand and doubly greedy in not staffing up or opening more of their services to account for the throng of guests that showed up many of whom were painfully and vocally surprised by the lackluster experience. But wait, there's more. Sunday was my wife and step son's birthday (same day!). Her mom had ordered a surprise bouquet of balloons to be delivered to the room. When she called to notify the front desk, they informed her that they don't do room deliveries but we can pick it up they said they would call our room or my cell to let us know when they arrived. I called them three times throughout the day, as did my mother in law and they kept saying nothing arrived and they would call when it did. They never called. I go down to the bell desk the next day and ask if balloons came by, we were expecting them yesterday, ?Oh, yes! They've been here since yesterday! We sent them to the wrong room, got them back and couldn't figure out where they were supposed to go, so we stuck them in the back room.? At this point we were just so done with the place. All in all, I can't say I blame the staff. My take is that they were completely overwhelmed by a fully booked hotel and it was their operations leadership that didn't bother to accommodate the massive number of people whose money they were excited to take. They just did not seem overly concerned with providing a quality experience. Shame on Hilton for playing the opportunists and forgetting that the word hospitality comes BEFORE the word industry.
Meadow S. (Individual traveler, booked 1 room), from
12-Apr-2021 Verified Review, stayed from Tue Mar 30 to Tue Apr 06 2021 at a $443.93 average nightly rate.