DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Cleveland Downtown - Lakeside — Hotel in Cleveland

Oh where do I start!! Let's pull your attention immediately to involves cockroaches.

I have reached out to this hotel but it appears they don't respond to those inquiries but do respond to reviews. I gave them the opportunity to make this right, and they have not.

We had a reservation at the “DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Cleveland Downtown – Lakeside” for February 14, 2025 to February 17, 2025. This was for a "stay and play" volleyball tournament.

This stay was horrific and traumatizing. February 14, 2025, was our first night at this hotel. We changed rooms the next morning because our room was not cleaned whatsoever other than making the beds and providing us folded towels. I would have changed immediately but it was late. That was round 1 packing up and moving rooms.

We are in a new room for February 15th. The room is slightly better but still overall not great at all. On February 16th we learn of their serious bug issues at this hotel. I woke up to the largest cockroach I have ever seen in our bathroom. To be honest, I have never encountered this situation EVER but a cockroach being the size of about 4 inches seems fairly large to me. I was horrified!!!!! I went to the front desk and told them I refuse to stay at this hotel and I am leaving. They said they were sorry and indicated sometimes cockroaches come through the pipes. They offered to clean the room, and that was a hard no because we were getting the heck out of this place. When we went back to the room to pack up, the damn cockroach was gone!?!?!?!? Where did it go?!?!?! The panic has now set in. Did it get in our stuff? Did something larger eat it? I am not ok after this experience.

I should not have to pay for anything having to sleep with cockroaches and go through that experience. No one should ever have to sleep in that kind of environment. So now we are on round 2 packing up and moving hotels -- in a winter storm.

This major issue is on top of so many other problems it has. They do not have a working elevator in the parking garage. This is not a new problem and has not worked in months. No one should be charged for parking to haul their luggage and bags multiple steps or levels ad then be charged $35 or $30 a night. But if you complain they will give it to you for $20.

We were staying with a large group, and another room guest woke up to bites all over him leading me to believe you have bed bugs or some type of bug infestation. This was not our experience, but it adds to the pot.

Another issue is lack of maintenance during the winter storm. They only narrowly plowed the immediate front of the building and all their sidewalks were not shoveled or plowed, making it hard to navigate to and from the convention center. Other surrounding businesses seemed to keep up with their sidewalks or at least put an effort in.

After the cockroach incident, we ended up making a reservation for Sunday, November 16th at the Hilton Downtown Cleveland. That hotel lives up to the Hilton name. The staff was very nice, but most importantly the hotel was clean. No complaints there whatsoever.

The fact that this Doubletree is even open for business is wrong. It should be completely shut down until it can serve its guests in a safe and clean environment. This location should be a complete embarrassment to the Hilton name. I HIGHLY encourage some type of risk management of Hilton to visit this location and take inventory of all the issues at this location. Feel free to stay in room 618 where you get nightly guests of cockroaches. Allowing anyone to stay there is completely unsanitary and unsafe. The Hilton has completely neglected this location, its guests, and its employees.

When we got home, I had to throw away about $150 worth of food. We packed plenty of snacks and food because we were at a volleyball tournament. When we arrived home, I had to keep everything out in our garage to hopefully ensure we did not bring back any unwanted bug guests from the hotel. We had to bag all our clothes up and immediately wash everything...

Our stay was horrible. I booked a double queen for my three children and I two months prior to our stay on 12-28-23. Before we arrived I tried to check in on my mobile Hilton Honors app and retrieve my mobile key, but continued to get a message stating they’d let me know when my room was ready. Check in is 3 pm and we arrived at the hotel at approximately 4 pm. There were 40-50 people waiting in line at the front desk. After 30 minutes of waiting I was told that they didn’t have a room ready for us yet. I asked why when checkin is 3 pm, only to be told that it begins at 3 pm, and it doesn’t mean the room is ready at 3 pm, which is asinine. I asked for a manager and he offered me a king room with a sofabed, which I accepted. The wait caused us to be late for reservations we had already spent money on. When we got back to the hotel after the Browns game we realized there weren’t linens in the room for the sofabed. I went to the front desk, where there was a long line of unhappy customers, only to be told by a very rude front desk worker that she was the only one working in the whole hotel and she would bring me the linens after she took care of the other guests in line. I asked her how long It would be because I had three children that were tired and needed to go to bed, and her response was whenever she gets to it. 45 mins later I called the front desk for an update and she said she was still taking care of the guests that were in line. I told her I was coming down and would wait for her to get the linens because my children needed to go to bed and she hung up on me. When I got to the lobby there was another line of unhappy guests. One couple with a young child had been given a room earlier in the day that was very dirty, including bloody towels. They moved that family into another room, but didn’t move their bags, so they had to wait 20 mins for them to be found. There were other guests that still hadn’t been given a room after trying to check in earlier in the day, some didn’t have towels in their room, and others still had rooms that were never cleaned when they checked in. When it was my turn the front desk worker didn’t even acknowledge me. She just gave me a dirty look and walked away to find what I needed. I waited 15 mins for her to come back with sheets, a blanket and one pillow. I asked for another pillow and she very rudely told me there weren’t anymore. When I got back to my room I proceeded to make the sofa bed only to find that the blanket I had been given was dirty. It was “stuck togeather” with what seemed to be a glue like substance, but obviously wasn’t glue. When I realized what it probably was I threw it on the ground and told my children not to touch it! Luckily my kids brought their own blankets because we had a 6 hour round trip. The next morning I gave my room keys to the cleaning lady in the hall not realizing I would need them to leave the parking garage because no one told me during check in. That was also a mess. Tonight I called the customer care 800 number and received excellent service. They created a case and are sending me a voucher for a future stay. We travel a lot and have stayed at various Hilton hotels with no issues. I pray this hotel is investigated so further guests do not have the same experience my family, as well as other guests...

We stayed here for the eclipse about 3 weeks, and overall our experience was mediocre at best. I'll focus on the 3 subcategories that Google provides - Rooms, Service, and Location.

The location for our purposes was great - it's essentially right around the corner from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center, and that's where we spent most of our day. As an aviation nerd, having the municipal airport in view from our room was also cool, but it's close enough that I think some people would have a problem with the noise. The hotel is also a little far from the city center, and we ended up choosing restaurants on our trip based on whether they were close enough to walk to. For any other type of visit, I think the location is ok at best.

The service was also decidedly "ok" - we received two different messages during our stay to check in and see if we needed anything, and the front desk team was always friendly and polite. The misses were mostly related to integration with Hilton's digital systems - the parking situation was a little confusing (we added it on online but needed to get a physical key from the front desk to use it), and the staff told us to not even bother using it.

The room was the biggest miss - this hotel is desperately in need of a remodel. Before you even get to the room itself, most of the "public" spaces beyond the lobby are dimly lit and very outdated (we joked a few times that the elevators were straight out of a horror movie with all of the shaking and flickering). Our room was badly outdated (think very early 00's) with a LOT of visible wear and tear (large gashes on furniture, faded carpet/upholstery). The level of cleanliness was ok at best with visible dust if you looked past the initial façade, and it looks like the windows haven't been cleaned in years.

Now you might be thinking, "gee, that all doesn't sound great, but 1-star seems a little harsh". Don't worry, dear reader, I've left the best for last - the price.

All of the hotels in Cleveland were obviously charging higher rates for the eclipse, and this was no exception. Now, our original booking tucked the actual rate behind an average since it was a multi-night stay, but per our receipt, the room rate for Sunday, 4/7 was $622.50.

Yes, over SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. The best part? It came to a grand total of $731.44 after taxes and fees. For some context, that's more expensive than a typical night at the Cleveland Ritz-Carlton, or a typical night at most of the deluxe resorts in Disney World (heck, it's more than the parks on top of that for some of the cheaper resorts). I paid it because this was essentially a once in a lifetime event and it was one of the few available options left, but I figured that it's a DoubleTree and it must be at least decent. Absolutely not, and you can bet that this will be the last time...