Tru By Hilton Duluth Mall Area — Hotel in Duluth

First let me say the staff here was very nice. That was really the best thing about this hotel.

This review is entirely based on the hotel itself, not the staff.

We were in Duluth on a vacation without our kids for the first time in 16 years. We are seasoned travelers who stay in hotels several weeks each year in many locations all around the US.

I am not sure who designed this hotel but, when you walk in, it's like walking into a freezing cold, badly animated cartoon. The design is very stark, with strange color choices, but that is a matter of personal opinion. The fact that the lobby (and room, when we walked in) are FREEZING is interesting, however, considering the fact that I am rarely, if ever cold. After some deliberation, we decided that the reason for the freezing cold air is to distract people from realizing that there is absolutely no way for fresh air to enter this hotel. The windows don't open, not even a couple of inches.

Now, on to our room. We stayed in a king room that we booked at the last minute. We definitely regret our choice. I am not sure what the demographic of this hotel is, but it is not seasoned travelers. I'm not even sure it's business travelers since it is WAY too expensive, especially considering the lack of amenities.

There are a bunch of things about the room that we really did not like, especially based on the price of this hotel compared to other hotels in much better locations in Duluth whose prices are very similar. First, there are NO closets and NO drawers. There are gigantic hooks on the walls and cutesy little signs that say things like "looking for more storage? Try under the bed!" News flash: Our suitcase didn't fit under the bed. (and under the bed looked like it hadn't seen a mop since this hotel was first opened).

We put our suitcase on the shelf underneath the television, but realized that is not the best place for it. The room is about a foot too narrow so you have to be very cautious when walking from the bathroom to the far side of the bed in the middle of the night so you don't stub your toe on anything or bump your suitcase off the shelf. The online photos are deceiving, the rooms are not nearly as wide as the photos portray them to be.

There is one extremely uncomfortable chair on rollers in the room (be careful to push it in underneath the shelf very carefully so you don't bump into it in the middle of the night). I guess this is supposed to be a desk chair, but the shelf it sits by is definitely not something I'd call a desk since it's only about 18" wide.

The windows do not open even a couple of inches.

The bathroom is nice and very large, but don't bother using the provided hand soap and shower shampoo/conditioner, etc. They are very hard to squeeze and only tiny little amounts come out. On the plus side, if you like the lemon Pledge like your mom used to use for dusting, the hand soap smells exactly like it.

There is NO maid service. None. We never saw a maid the entire time we were there (four days).

The bed is a disgrace. One mattress on a platform. The sheets were nice, but too small for the bed and kept popping off. The pillowcases were too small for the pillows (EWWW!!) and kept sliding off. There are no extra blankets in the room. When we arrived, it was 62 degrees in our room. Like I said, I think they keep it cold to disguise the fact that there hasn't been fresh air in this hotel since it was built.

The television mounted on the wall was nice, but it didn't work one of the nights we were there (of course, the ONE night we decided to head back early and wanted to watch the Home Run Derby).

We didn't use the small workout room or the pool because we were so dismayed by the poor quality of this hotel that we tried to stay out as long as possible each day.

There are a lot of great hotels in Duluth in the same price range as this hotel. I definitely recommend people choose...

Stopped here for one night on my way elsewhere. Hilton or “by Hilton” hotels are usually pretty nice. This one was meh. Everything appears to be new, clean and modern at first glance (which is great for photos and advertisements) but it didn’t take long to notice all of the issues. We were surprised with an adjoining room. I really wish hotels would give a heads up on this. The man alone in the next room was constantly grunting, complaining and yelling to himself. He must’ve been having issues as well, because the staff kept going to his room. When my wife left the room and came back, he opened his door and said “oh finally!”, assuming she was staff. Just made it weird and awkward that we had to listen to him all night. We tried to drown it out with the TV, but conveniently the screen was going out. The top half of the tv was 20x darker than the bottom, so we basically got to watch the bodies of everyone in the movie we watched. Plus, energy saver mode is part of their “hotel tv” setup. The LCD constantly got darker, brighter, darker. Super disappointing considering we had planned this to be our movie night, but by the time we noticed it we had already set up our bed, unpacked and we’re too tired to change rooms. Next, there isn’t any space for literally anything. I’m guessing this hotel did everything as cheap as possible. There’s a sign that says “looking for storage? Check out the coat hangers on the wall!”. There’s only one night stand. No microwave.. The employee claimed they don’t have microwaves because of theft, but this just doesn’t make sense. People pay $175 a night just to steal a cheap microwave? Yet they leave the flatscreen TV? Just admit there’s a budget and it doesn’t include a microwave. Now to the bathroom.. The soap dispensers are these weird tubes on the wall that need to be squeezed. I totally want to fully grip a soap dispenser that is covered in who knows how much bacteria and crud.. If I want to wash my hands before I eat, I have to grab a nasty dispenser that countless people who wipe their butt and do god only knows what else with their hands have also grabbed? The thing about a normal dispenser is that you can quickly push it with the back of your hand or arm. Same with the sink.. It’s not a normal faucet. It’s this weird little knob that moves up, down, left or right, that needs to be perfectly centered in order for it to turn off completely. Again, you can’t just quickly push it down with the back of your hand. So after you finally clean your hands, you are forced to grab it and calibrate. Now, washing your hands was pointless. So many things in this room just don’t make sense. It is possible to be both cheap and functional. This ain’t it. I feel robbed paying the same rate for this hotel that I have for any other Hilton or “by Hilton” hotel. I would expect the same quality.

The laminate flooring also caused any sound in the room to be exponentially louder. I have experience in flooring, that floor won’t last long with the amount of traffic that walks on it. At the end of the day, the hotel was somewhat clean, the breakfast was fair and the employees were nice. None of these complaints have anything to do with the employees or the specific hotel itself. It seems that this entire line of “Tru by Hilton” have been made with a very low budget in mind. I see very similar reviews for other locations. My main gripe was that half of the TV...

So I travel quite a bit for work and stay in many hotels, although when possible I stay within the Hilton family to collect points. Here is the positive: the staff were nice, friendly and responsive. They also have LaVazza coffee (which is a nice plus), but the stock of tea was low and no hot water dispenser the first evening (they did put one out when I asked). Breakfast the was same as most Hampton Inn hotels - they kept it clean and well-stocked and heated. However, this is one of the worst hotel designs I have ever seen -- which is not the fault of the employees --- but I question whether the architect and design team ever actually spent a night in a hotel. Here are the highlights:

The rooms are small - no room to move around at all. The beds are not real beds - they are platforms with cheap mattresses. The pillows are terrible. The floors in the room are not carpeted - they are laminate/fake wood - so very cold, very sterile and very loud. The "desk" is tiny and on wheels so it moves around all over the place when you are working. The desk chair is on wheels, but there is no carpet, so it flies all over the place (sound hell for the people below). Not a single chair other than the office chair on which to sit - mainly because the room is too small to fit a chair. Not a single drawer in the entire room to store anything. No closet - just a pole with hangers at the end of the room. No closet so the ironing board just hangs in the room as well as the iron. The shower glass doors look nice, but while being closed all the way, they leak like crazy, so you walk out of shower in to a pool of water on the floor. I could hear everything in my neighbor's room and especially the hallways. The towels literally felt like sandpaper. The lobby looks like it was decorated by the people who designed Romper Room. Weird stuff and primary colors - no warmth. There was an odd smell when I entered the room. The body soap has a distinct Lemon Pledge smell; I spent the trip having weird flashbacks to my grandmother's house. There are only about 6 tables for breakfast - but plenty of guests. The decorations are, I don't know how to describe -- 1986 dentist office chic seems the most accurate description. Like a mall threw up and then bought the "furniture" at Ikea. The hotel itself is in the middle of a field that is not landscaped so you look like you are driving into a vacant lot or old-school high rise housing project. I tried to give the "Rooms" category zero stars, but then it looks like you just didn't rate them, so I upgraded to one star. I am a silver member, and this is nit-picky, but when I stay at other Hilton hotels, I am greeted by "Welcome back, I see you are a silver member --- thank you for returning. As a member you are entitled two bottles of water - do you prefer those room temperature or chilled?" -- again, the staff was very nice at Tru and perhaps that is a little thing - but it is a nice touch when I stay elsewhere in the Hilton family.

I stay at Hampton Inn's all the time --- and they are a thousand times better for less or same cost, and I get the same points as they are all Hilton hotels. I feel terribly writing this, as the people were nice, but the facility is, well, just terrible and uncomfortable. I would recommend avoiding at all costs! Seriously. PS. Stay off my lawn (that's how I felt writing this). Sorry...