Hilton Austin — Hotel in Austin

I want to start by saying every single employee we encountered there were absolutely fantastic! From the friendly front desk staff, the incredibly quick employee who brought us waters, and the people working the breakfast buffet, they were all lovely! However....that can't save the frustration of being on the 20th floor and still hearing more than 2 Different dance clubs 1-2 blocks away pounding out their music so clearly that we could hear every word in the lyrics until closing after 2am. The front desk staff were kind and offered their 'sincerest' apologies, ear plugs, and the option to move rooms to a side that supposedly doesn't quite face the same area. We were only there for 2 nights and it was already 1am by the time I broke and went down to inquire about the obviously known problem, so we just stayed put. It's hard to believe an entire side of the hotel (26 floors worth of rooms) is known to be unrestful, and yet Hilton hasn't done anything to mitigate the problem by getting thicker/more sound absorbent windows.

Ather complaint is the charge for parking. We did have a rental car and admittedly didn't inquire as to how much daily rates would be. Turns out if you use valet, I believe it was something like $50/day, but self park was only a few dollars cheaper 🤔 Neither of that mattered because if we hadn't even mentioned that we had a vehicle, it would have been Free because the parking gate was open the whole weekend! Yet the front desk clerk made a point of letting us know that parking for the 2 days was absolutely on our final bill. Lesson learned there!

The last complaint is their digital ordering system doesn't list a description of all their offerings. I have food sensitivities and seeing that we were in Texas, most things the restaurants offered were "spicy", so I opted for 2 sides from the Cannon + Belle restaurant. The 2 sides were cheesy mac and creamed corn. I found out the next day that the cheesy mac was called Queso Mac on the actual menu, because it definitely had jalapeño bits in the sauce (or something else equally spicy) which makes it unfortunately unedible for me. The creamed corn was actually not creamed corn either, but more like cheesy corn....but super delicious!...after I scraped off the top layer of tajin that was sprinkled on the top. lol once that part was removed, I could eat it with no issues, so at least I had that. Unfortunately I had placed the digital order so late in the evening that by the time I picked up the food and made it back to my room and discovered the issues, it was too late to rectify the issue and mobile ordering was closed. A better description of the dishes (or any description to be honest) would have been incredibly helpful to avoid that issue.

On to positives! And yes, there are just as many lol The hotel itself is in an awesome location! It's walking distance to all of the action on 6th. It's a 10 minute easy walk to the Congress Ave Bridge, to go see the bats in the evening. It's directly across the street from the convention center and the Downtown Station for the CapMetro Rail! The room itself was decent, solid floors (no carpet), decent shower head (think one of those "rain" heads), and a mini-fridge in the room! The hotel has two restaurants: Cannon + Belle (mentioned earlier) and Austin Taco Project. We had pre-purchased breakfast with our reservation, which was at Austin Taco Project, which allowed us access to the breakfast buffet there. The buffet had plenty of options! Both days we went they had scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, and something sweet (first day was Belgium waffle, second was French toast). They also had vegetables, vegetarian protein option, and a food of the day (I can't recall the first day, but second was a chorizo potato scramble). They also had potatoes (first day was breakfast potato in a pepper medley, second day was tater tots in a pepper medley). They also had fresh whole fruit (banana, apple, orange), fresh cut fruit (pineapple, melon, cantaloupe), plus yogurt, parfaits, and chia puddings, breads,...

I like to start with a positive and the staff here is top notch, just as you expect with a Hilton property. The hotel itself was clean but a bit sprawling in a way that leaves you a little disoriented. The elevators to the guest rooms are a hike. ||My stay was for pleasure, to see a lecture on site. I generally choose a property that is more pleasure and/or family friendly and Hilton Austin is geared toward the business or convention traveler. Not a bad thing, for sure but make note if you are traveling with kids or are looking for a relaxed vacation spot, this may not be the place for you.|You are one block from Austin's famed 6th St but I did not find noise to be a problem. I was on the 26th floor, however. ||The room was small for a 'premium' space but it was clean and neat. There was a small coffee area tucked behind the door but there was no light. This is not ideal for morning coffee if you don't want to wake up the rest of the room by turning on the overhead light. ||For those that want various dining options on site, this is not the hotel for you. There is no hotel kitchen or restaurant. There are two restaurants, operated by third parties, in the hotel. One offers tacos and appetizers, albeit upscale and one is refined Texas fare. Again not a bad thing but the fine dining option is only open in the evening. You can order to-go and the hotel offers Room Service but is it only from these two options so if you want breakfast or lunch, the Austin Taco Project is your only choice. I'm not a fan of food delivery but if you do go this route remember there are no microwaves in the rooms, so choose wisely. This was also a bummer for the leftover taco, I saved from lunch. ||There are plenty of restaurants in walking distance. If you have a car, my suggestion if to leave it parked and walk or get a ride. Parking in downtown Austin is neither easy nor cheap. Speaking of the hotel parking charge, it's basically robbery. $45 to self park, $54 valet.||These next items are specific to my experience and may not be the same for everyone; however, they do bear mentioning. The hyped Digital Key, which I have used many times did not work here which caused several problems. First, you can use electronic check in and then use the Digital Key to enter the parking garage (this links the fee to you room). Mine did not load so I entered the parking garage as a private guest. After multiple trips to the front desk my Digital Key finally worked 6 hours after I checked in. Second, the check in process needs to tell folks their key, hard or Digital, is the pass on the elevator to get to their floor. This caused problems for almost every newcomer on the elevator that did not know to scan their key to select their floor. Third and back to the parking issue, my parking was never linked to my room, even though I let the front desk know I self-parked. As a result, I had to pay $51 to get out of the garage. This makes me wonder, how would someone, not using the Digital Key have there parking fee added to their room at the lower rate, since you cannot pull up to the front entrance (blocked off) and check in, in the traditional way and then park.|Finally, there was a 'chat' feature that greeted me after check in, I assumed this was auto generated. I did try and use this since it was offered and easily assessable on the Hilton app. I asked about my Digital Key, after my second trip to the lobby had not fixed it. I did not receive a response. I tried again, to request more coffee. I did receive a response, two hours later. Waiting for the coffee was not the issue but not receiving a timely response makes you wonder if the request was received, at all.||All-in-all, this is a nice property. Quality Hilton but I never felt 'welcome'. This is not a staff issue, I was greeted by all and every interaction was genuine. The space just seemed impersonal and without...

Awful customer service and out-dated amenities/rooms. Stay somewhere else. We have seen the great reviews below, but unfortunately, our experience was much different than others. We planned a 4-night stay at this hotel, which turned into a 2-night stay. Our hotel room fridge did not work, so we contacted the front desk about it. They told us they’d get someone to fix it for us - no one ever did. The body wash dispensers in our bathroom were not filled up. We were completely out of body soap by the second day, which means they weren’t filled up before we checked in. Lastly, the valet here was the worst we’ve ever experienced. We had dinner reservations and had to wait 30-40 minutes for valet to bring our vehicle out. We saw guests pulling up and getting out of their car to ask where the valet workers were while we were standing outside waiting for our vehicle to be pulled up. When we returned from our dinner reservation, there were about 6 cars lined up in front of us, and we sat in our vehicle for another 30-40 minutes because there was only ONE valet employee working. Not to mention, this was Memorial Day Weekend. We do not blame the valet employee for this situation, we could tell he was trying his very best and we told him we wish we could help, we don’t understand why they would have ONE valet worker taking care of all the vehicles at this large hotel.

To get to the worst part of it all - customer service. We decided to check out early because we wanted to get a better experience during our visit. Instead of complaining and making a big deal about the issues, we simply told them something came up, and needed to leave. We are Hilton Honors members (silver status) and have been loyal to Hilton hotels, until now. We had enough points to cover both nights at the hotel. When we got the bill, they used the points AND charged us for the 2-night stay. We called for clarification, and when we got a hold of the man on the phone, we were expressing our concerns and how we didn’t understand it, and he ended the phone call with “This is where we’re at. I have a really long line here and if you want to discuss this more deeply, I can give you a call back.” We provided him a call-back number, and did he ever call? No. That’s what lead us to going back to Hilton in person and speaking to the front desk associate. Luis gave us 2 different receipts. An “A” receipt and a “B” receipt. Supposedly, the “B” receipt was confidential and for them to keep, which raised red flags for us because it showed a discrepancy in the allocation of points that were used from our Hilton Honors system. We spoke to a lady Saturday morning (around 11am) who was no help to us and was visibly getting frustrated when we kept asking for clarification. At that point, we decided to ask to speak to the manager, and her response was along the lines of, “ I can but he’s just gonna tell you the same thing i’m telling you.” Then she came back up and told us he wasn’t there at the moment, so we decided to wait. After wishing in the lobby for about 20 minutes, he finally came out, didn’t introduce himself, and sure enough, told us the same thing the front desk associate said. The situation ended with him telling us “I’m sorry, this is it, there’s nothing I can do about the rate.”

So, if customer service and hospitality is important to you. Do not stay here. You can get a better experience elsewhere with a comparable price...