Homewood Suites by Hilton Albuquerque Downtown — Hotel in Albuquerque

BEWARE - THEFT - DO NOT LEAVE VALUABLES IN YOUR ROOM UNATTENDED! This review is related to the Homewood Suites Downtown in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I wanted to share my experience in hopes that other patrons may benefit from it. My family and I stayed at the Homewood Suites Downtown, which shares a building with the Hilton Garden Inn, June 12-17 2023. The hotel itself, the amenities, are actually quite nice. Parking and surrounding areas are another story (limited parking, numerous parking lots scattered around a 1 block area, and homeless wandering around everywhere). However, this review is actually not about the hotel, but rather our customer experience with staff and management. We checked out of the hotel on Saturday 6/17 and unfortunately my wife left her purse hanging in the closet. We noticed it was missing when we returned home and contacted the hotel. Staff agreed to look for the purse in lost and found and committed to returning our call after they had done so and checked the room. We didn’t actually get a call back so when I followed up later that day, we were informed that the purse was not in the lost and found and also not in the room by the housekeeping manager. We decided to escalate our concern to the manager, Omar Canales, and spoke to him initially where he committed to speak to the housekeeper directly and review the camera footage. He also agreed to follow up with us later that day and gave us his personal email address because his Hilton email address “Was not working.” Needless to say, after numerous calls and repeated emails we never spoke to him again nor did he reach out to us. At that point, I reached out to Hilton customer service. It seems they have “Offshored” customer service to India and we got repeated messages from different reps as a result, none helpful or overly “Customer Centric.” We got the usual, “We care but we can’t help,” messages and each time we tried to further explain our concern, we got the, “We understand,” messages. Very frustrating and not helpful at all. Our point in reaching out to Hilton directly is we have been loyal Hilton customers for at least 10 years and we assumed they would be willing to compensate us in some form for the issue, points even. Turns out they really don’t care and were completely unwilling to help resolve the matter as it is a “Hotel Issue.” Our relationship and loyalty is with Hilton, not any specific hotel, so this policy is concerning to say the least. Next, we escalated to the general manager, Regina with similar results, never spoke to her and she never returned any of our calls. The general message from the hotel management and Hilton was - pound sand, finders keepers. We do believe the housekeeper stole the purse and neither management or Hilton is unwilling to do anything about it. At the end of the day, Hilton is no longer my hotel of choice, I am moving to Marriott Bonvoy exclusively. The one bright spot in this unfortunate experience is American Express. We were able to recover the cost of the purse through purchase protection from AMEX and the issue was resolved in 24 hours - that is what I call service! Hilton and Homewood suites, you should be ashamed of yourselves and how you...

We get to this hotel around 9pm. We try and park in the parking garage but it is completely filled. We were directed by the front desk attendant to a parking lot for hotel guests. If she didn’t come out to help, we and the other people following us would not have known where to go as there were no signs (at least none that we could see) in the garage showing where to go in case it was filled. We park and start walking up a dark alley to get to the hotel. There is limited light and we were met by drunk people walking towards us, being loud and trying to talk to us. (Ladies be careful in this area- especially if you are alone!!) also, there are a lot of homeless hanging around the parking lot for the hotel and behind the hotel so keep that in mind when walking back there. I try and use my digital key on my app to open the door. There is a sign on the outside of the doors pretty much saying along the lines of the doors will be locked to everyone starting at 10pm regardless of if you have a key or not and to use the front door. It’s about 930pm at this point and none of the doors are opening. People are inside just watching us struggle and go to every. Single. Door. Before we FINALLY get to the open door. We did not see a sign (or we may have missed it) showing us which door was the front door so it took us a minute to finally get to it. We go to our room and sleep for the night. Room was clean and nice so that was great. The next morning as we are trying to sleep in because of a long car drive we have ahead of us, it is about 0850 and housekeeping is banging on our door over and over and repeatedly saying “housekeeping!” and would not stop until I woke up and yelled, “what?!” After that was said, they stopped and we didn’t hear them knock after that. We decided to get up and get ready. We pack and go to get breakfast. This was not said to us beforehand but we go to the 1st floor to the dining area and are handed a menu. We say we are here for the free breakfast and was told we had to pay. Confused, we said we were under the impression there was free breakfast as that was what was listed on my app for the hotel where it showed what benefits and whatnot I have. They asked our room number and said we had to go to the 2nd floor for the breakfast. We head on up and try to get the door to open with our digital key. There is no option on the digital key to open that door. We finally get in no thanks to the staff that was right on the other side of the door just watching us have issues. We confirm we were able to be up there and continue on. To summarize: The digital key at this location was not the best so I recommend getting a physical key. You will most likely look like an idiot trying to unlock all the doors at the front of the hotel at night before 10pm (if you’re using the digital key on the app) until you get to the actual door to get in The overflow parking in the back of the hotel is sketchy at night so be careful walking from there to the front of the hotel And be prepared to not sleep in- housekeeping will not...

This is for a single-night stay. To get to the hotel, I walked from the Amtrak station, and did the same to catch the train the following afternoon.||Entry to the lobby, to any floor except the indoor public areas, to the outdoor patio, and of course to one's room are all very secure....each one requiring the use of guest key card. Non-card holding guests are required to ring the bell for access to the lobby. Considering that it is located downtown where there are quite a few homeless people on the street, any lesser security measure would fail to provide adequate security to the hotel guest, both in the literal and perceptive sense. I am very appreciative for this thoughtful security measure.||Once in the hotel, I found the public areas to be spotless; the furnishings and decor are very chic. There is a newness to everything. All interior areas are well-lit and because the exterior walls of the first and second floor public areas are glass walls, these are naturally flooded with sunlight in the day. There are plenty of seating areas in both first and second floors for solo and group guests. My suggestion is to add more power sockets and charging stations at these seating areas to accommodate more guests to be able to use their electronics in their preferred seating area. The second floor outdoor patio is spacious and there are fire pits in the seating areas, although it would have been a more inviting patio if there was an oversized jacuzzi hot tub or even a plunge pool to complement the ambiance of a place where guests congregate for relaxation.||I stayed at the top floor in room 620, and I was very happy with everything in it. Everything has a crisp, freshness to it, everything was in order. It has a direct view of the railroad tracks used by both Amtrak and the regional train system.||I had dinner at the restaurant and was very delighted with the beer Dos-Veinte Dos, which according to my wait staff was brewed specifically for the hotel. That was too bad, because this was one excellent tasting beer! It only had 5.2 ABV and does not have any hoppy bitterness. It paired nicely with my salad greens and corn-off-the-cob. My dinner portions were sufficient, filling and suitably priced --- just the base price of each item and sales tax, and no hidden "service" fee that some restaurants spring on their unsuspecting diners.||The front desk and restaurant staff were professional, courteous, and knowledgeable with respect to the questions that I asked.||The hotel was only a 7-minute walk from the Alvarado Transportation Center/Amtrak station, making it quite convenient to...