Hilton Cincinnati Netherland Plaza — Hotel in Cincinnati

Stayed here for the first time as it was the host hotel of a conference I attended. I'd always heard how great this hotel is, so I was excited to stay. However, I left very underwhelmed by the whole experience. So here's the pros/cons of my stay.||Pros - location - downtown Cincy and in walking distance of several eateries and attractions. |hotel staff - all were friendly |restaurant - reasonably priced for a hotel|Location of parking - attached parking garage (but it is NOT affiliated with the hotel, - see con below|Room - was clean and this hotel actually provides maid service daily without you having to request it. For the most part, didn't hear noise from other rooms.||Cons - |room - the shower didn't work in my room. the water came on but only into the tub and it was barely lukewarm. I ended up moving rooms. New room's shower worked but the water was even cooler.This was interesting since the sink water in both rooms was hot. Also no microwave in the rooms and no option to request one. There's one small microwave in the lobby - the hotel has at least 29 floors! That's a lot of people needing to share one dorm room sized microwave||Noise - not sure if hotel is remodeling or a nearby building but lots of loud drilling during the day. So much for an afternoon nap between meetings. ||Elevators - several just weren't running leading me to have to carry my luggage up and down steps to get from parking garage entrance to hotel lobby (coming and going). There was an elevator bank of 6, but on the last night, only three were operating. It took about 40 minutes to get from Mezzanine to my room floor. Finally gave up and went down in order to go back up. || staff - pointed out shower issue to maid as soon as I discovered it. she said she would have it addressed. I don't know if you put in an order or not because when I checked with hotel front desk that evening they had no record of a problem. It's now about 11 pm. The front desk sent someone one right up and he determined it could not be fixed immediately and I needed to switch rooms. I packed up all my stuff and switched to a new floor. No problem, at least I have a shower for the morning. However, As mentioned above water in this room was just too cool to stand under, so I had to "shower" by just letting the water run and splash as need to soap up and rinse (same thing I had to do in the first room where the shower wouldn't come on at all). ||accommodating room change - upon checking out I asked if they offered any accommodations for me having to switch rooms. Staff initially started to ask if I had reported the problem, but stopped herself mid-sentence because obviously I did since they switched my rooms. She then told, who I assumed was a supervisor, that I wanted some form of compensation for the inconvenience. She comes back with an offer for a free breakfast at their buffet. I declined since I was literally checking out to leave. After some back and forth with her, I was offered points toward a future stay. ||restaurant - attempted to eat lunch but I couldn't be seated because they were "full". They had about 20 customers in the bar area. The rest of the place was empty and only opened to people who came with a "large" party. this was confusing to me since this is a conference hosting hotel - you can only feed 20 people at a time for lunch???? I was able to eat an early dinner Saturday by going at 4 pm||parking - the self parking is a garage that is attached to hotel, but the hotel does not own or operate it. It's $35/night but there are no attendants or check in/out stations. Everything is done via an app after you scan a QR code with your phone and enter your credit card info. The app is user friendly for app savy people. LOL Tip... if you are a hotel guest and spending the night you want the "in and out" pass. I finally figured this out after being charged for my first 4 hours separately. Second tip... don't bother asking hotel staff, none of the ones I approached for assistance could answer any questions. ||This is not the worst hotel but it doesn't live up to the hype...

The ONLY positive about this hotel is that it was close to our tournament venue. The check-in process was long. Once I finally got up to the counter, her computer crashed which was by no means her fault. The couple beside me finished up and the other worker who heard what was going on started checking in the guest BEHIND me rather than helping me. Once she saw I was annoyed, she then started to check us in. When we finally got into the room it was hot, the soap bar was open and used, hair in the sink, the fridge was not cold, the pillow case on the bed by the wall was visibly dirty. I was willing to look past all of this until the next day. My son and I decided to walk back from the tournament for a quick break. On arrival to my room, the door would not open. I went back down to the lobby and was given another card. That one did not work. I went back down again and was given another one. That one did not work. I was given a 3rd and then asked by the baggage check if he wanted me to have him go up with me to get it unlocked as if I did not know how to open a door. That one did not work. He then tried to assist and it was finally discovered that my door must be "dead." I asked to move to a different room to avoid this happening again and was told no with no explanation. I met maintenance up at my hotel room and they smelled terrible of marijuana to the point of giving me a headache. My 11 year old son even commented on the terrible smell. I asked if this was likely going to happen again and was assured that it would not. Well, guess what? I get back to my room after being gone most of the day at the tournament and I can't get into the room. Same issue again. I went down to the front desk where I had to wait in line to speak to someone. I explained what was going on to the lady with the bright lipstick that first tried to check me in and she told me that I was at the wrong room. I said what do you mean I am at the wrong room? She said that I was trying to access the wrong room and proceeded to give me a key for some other room. I said well I would like to switch rooms but was told no. She said no, you are trying to get into the wrong room. I said, how is it possible that I "accessed the wrong room." I had a handwritten key card with room 1102 on it and we had stayed the night in that room. How does it make sense to tell me that I accessed the wrong room. The manager Tanisha was checking out guests from the snack bar but would not speak to me even though I directly asked. I was then given a key card to room 905 but had to remind the lady with the bright lipstick that I could not access my current room. We then again had to wait on maintenance. We loaded up all of our stuff and moved to the other room. Upon arrival there was trash and dirty dishes outside of our room. It smelled very strongly of mens cologne. it was extremely hot in the room again. I had to turn the thermostat down to 64 just to keep it at 70-71 which still felt hot. The AC was extremely loud ALL night. A video is attached. I could not sleep and it woke my son up several times. The clip holding the mirror on our door must have broken and the mirror shattered on our floor. I did my best to clean it up to keep myself and my kids from getting cut since no one at the front desk answered the phone. I finally heard back from Tanisha after several calls to the front desk. She was very nice on the phone and apologized about the room key situation. At that time the AC issue was not discussed and the mirror had not fallen yet. She told me that I would be receiving a refund for one of the nights. I was charged full price. I waited around in line at the front desk to be sure that the refund was happening and also to inform housekeeping of the mirror breaking so they would not cut themselves. After waiting for some time, I had to leave to get to the game on time. I put the key in the drop box and sent a message regarding to mirror online at Hilton's website. At MINIMUM, I deserve the refund I was promised if not the entire stay. I have left 2 messages....

I really want to give the hotel a five, but will explain why I can’t in a moment. The hotel itself is beautiful. It was easy to find and in a great spot. I picked it because I wanted a suite, and the one I booked had doors to close off the living room from bedroom. That was a huge plus!! I picked a room when I did early check in, but got a call it wasn’t available so they moved us. We were able to store our luggage since the room wasn’t ready, and everyone was super nice about it. I want to give a huge shout out to Nepal (hopefully I have his name right). He brought our bags up and was extremely kind and nice to me and my boys. He was patient as I got my keys, and just had a fantastic attitude overall. He remembered us and said hi every time we saw him. The room was fine in terms of cleanliness. We had to wait quite some time for a blanket for the pull out, and were told they didn’t have any. We got that sorted out. Valets were all extremely nice but was expensive but very much worth it!!! The room was the absolute quietest I’ve been in in a long time. It was amazing. I wish all hotels were that quiet. We did room service for breakfast both days. The food was good, just expensive which I expected. The not so good: The bar itself is beautiful, but the service is not good. It was slow, and when we sat at a table in the bar area the “waitress” was hurried and rude. She even complained to us she had too many tables (we were fine and didn’t express frustration). That soured things, and made it painfully obvious how not great she was. I filled out the door hanger for breakfast, which is supposed to be picked up by 1am. It was there in the morning so I had to call and wait a very long time for delivery. Don’t offer the door hangers if you don’t want to use them. I would’ve been fine with that but was pleased I had the option…until nothing was done. The absolute worst (would lower score significantly if not for the quiet hotel) was the elevators. They are shaky going up, but the ridiculous thing is they broke (“had to be reset”) the morning we needed to leave. Thank goodness my husband had brought a few loads of luggage down before this happened. However…he wound up STUCK in valet!!! For nearly 40 minutes. They kept saying it would be reset in 3 minutes. We needed to leave for the other reservation we had, and with no service in valet I was in the dark with two small kids in the room. I called and they said oh it was a fire alarm, but looking at all of the other reviews of similar stories it seems this was not truthful. My husband finally got a service elevator up as there were tons of people waiting. Valet was great and this wasn’t their fault. When they finally started working and we could leave, I was very hesitant to ride them. We made it down though. I’d stay here again, but this was a sour and to an...