Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort

Very dissapointing Sadly this hotel is not what it should be. The rooms in the Rainbow tower are extremely dated and although the view is excellent the quality of the rooms are not. The lifts are in no way able to keep up with the number of guests so you often have to wait for 20 min for a lift to arrive. The pools are about 30% the size they need to be and the chances of getting a bed are slim to impossible. The good news there is a great lagoon and a beach. However, if you want a bed it's a $26 per day per bed charge or you can lay in the dust (not sand). If you want a sun shade that's a $47 charge. If you want food - go outside the hotel where it's reasonably priced (50% of the hotel) I would honestly not recommend this hotel. We booked through Virgin Holidays and I would not book though them either - zero help

Many options for food and activities right out the doorstep! This resort area is much larger and busier than expected. We stayed at the Grand Waikikian and our first room had water issues. When we first reported it, the initial was not satisfactory. After a couple of conversations with the manager on duty, we were moved to a vacant penthouse suite with amazing views and amenities. As an owner with Hilton Grand Vacations Club, I was pleased that they finally found a way to remedy the issue with our original room. The only complaint I have with the resort area is that the kids pool with the slide closes the earliest and therefore it isnt as accessible for fun after the beach/sunset. The restaurants on site are quite expensive but so are the restaurants around the area. Best option is to buy some groceries and cook into condos!

HHV is a Resort Factory, and Not in a Good Way The most important thing you should know about the HHV, if you’ve never stayed here, is that it’s really multiple hotels in one. It’s a beach hotel. It’s a conference hotel. It’s a timeshare hotel. Actually, several different timeshares. What that means is that it is very busy, and - even if you are a Hilton elite member - you will wait, repeatedly, for everything. As a Hilton Diamond member, I experienced zero recognition of any sort. And, please don’t fall for the “upgrade your room” offer in email or the app. They will charge you, and will not give you any sort of upgraded room. We typically book ocean front rooms when we travel personally. This particular trip was for work, so my company travel agent - appropriately - booked a regular city view room. We were suckers and fell for the “upgrade” button, happy to pay the difference ourselves. We were assigned a room on the lowest floor of the tower with a view of the continuous procession of cars coming and going on the driveway. We honestly believe we were given a worse room than had we not sought an upgrade. To be charged extra for a worse room was insulting. Lesson learned - and shared, with each of you. We come to Hawaii roughly a dozen times a year, and we’ve stayed nearly everywhere in Waikiki over a few decades. I currently have two other stays booked at the HHV in the months ahead, at the top end of their room categories, and we are now cancelling them in favor of staying elsewhere. For some reason our memory of this place was better than the current reality. We travel a ton all over the world and have top level status with every hotel chain, so it’s just a waste of energy to spend money at a place that doesn’t value your business. All that said, it’s not all bad. On the plus side: the location is great. The beach is terrific, and I think it’s absolutely the best beach spot in Waikiki. The Rainbow Tower is beautiful at night. Fireworks on Friday night are great. That said, you can enjoy the beach, and the fireworks, without staying here. Plenty of places to rent chairs or other gear if you need them. On balance, in my view, the negatives of HHV outweigh the positives. The resort is big, busy, and self absorbed. There’s nothing special about the service. For the duration of your stay, you are only a number to them - one of many at the resort at any given time, to be herded in, and then out, in order to make room for the next wave.

WORST TRAVEL EXPERIENCE Read Before Booking THIS IS BY FAR THE WORST TRAVEL EXPERIENCE PLEASE READ IF YOU PLAN ON COMING HERE I am a Diamond member at HIlton and a frequent traveler. In any experience there are things that can go wrong and ultimately there is always an opportunity to create a better experience which one our case was a consistent let down every step of the way. Hospitality: after the first night there they came to clean our room took every towel, did not replace the towels, or the clean the room. The result was a small child freezing cold in the shower who had to use hand towels to try to dry off. Ended up catching a cold. We later tried book a $600+ surfing lesson through the hotel. We were assured it was good for small kids and we did not need a voucher to go. When we got there they patronized us for a voucher, told is an an authoritative condescending tone to go stand in the corner and stretch for 15 minutes cause we would need it. These were one on one lessons, no instructor no direction, just plain rude. Then when asked if the kids would have life vests the answer was NO and when asked how far out we would be going they said 400 yards. These are kids under 10 who have never been surfing and this did not seem safe at all. So we canceled the lesson and then were told to go get a refund. After spending a bunch of time booking the lesson we went to cancel where we were told the system was down and the the gentleman working would not take my info and insisted I come back down again and hope the system was working. He heard me sharing with my partner as I walked away how disappointing this was and he came and took my info to never call. Integrity: we were assured the room would be cleaned and that this would not happen again. The entire week they left trash in the room and common things that get thrown out during house cleaning would be left in the room. Leadership: we spoke to a total of four different managers across our stay and no one took any ownership of the situations that occurred. In several cases the managers tried to get me to talk to someone else taking 0 ownership of any kind of process. After dealing with this whole experience when I thought it could not get worst I called the evening before to request a bellman for the following morning. The person working was rude, refused to take an appointment and said just call 30 minutes before. Now this is not normal but fine, I did as he asked. I was met on the phone by someone who spoke to me as if I was a piece of garbage and he was doing me a favor. He laughed in my face on the phone and said "Yes or NO" you either want in now or not, and if no you want to wait I can't guarantee someone to come if we get another call before you. Literally laughing at me as I had to be firm with him to get him to try to take the situation seriously. I had to call the front desk supervisor to get someone to come to my room and then tried to pass me a long to the bellman to discuss what happened when no one was paying attention and we had to leave for a flight. This literally was the worst experience I had in my life from start to finish. The water slides are overcrowded, don't open till 11 same with the food, and the main one does not open till 2pm. The service here is a combination of disappointing and poor. There is no sense of urgency, care, hospitality, leadership or anything that Hilton claims its properties stand for here. My suggestion is DON'T COME HERE. No one here cares if you are having a good experience, and that was my experience.

It is just okay… Our experience with the hotel was mediocre at best. The employees are kind and very helpful, however the hotel overall needs a lot of work. Certain were not what I expected when booking. When visiting the fitness center a lot of the equipment was either unavailable or not taken care of.