Hilltop Legacy Vacation Rental — Hotel in Hawaii

Having read all the horror stories about this property on TA, google reviews, and Booking.com, I have to admit that I was dreading my stay at this place. I am glad to say that we did survive and although it was not as horrible as we had imagined, certain aspects of the horrible reviews were true. I hate to write bad reviews, especially since the owner's father was really nice and he did his best to be a good host (The owner himself, we never met during our stay).||Checking in: the property uses codes for the front door and rooms, and you're supposed to get these codes before you arrive as there isn't always someone there to check you in. I tried to contact them a week before arriving via the Booking.com app. No response. Twice. I then tried emailing and texting them and finally got a reply confirming my booking, but still no code or instructions. We decided to try our luck, and luckily the owner's father was there to check us in. However, he was surprised his son did not send us the codes, as he said he was not always there. |So if you decide to stay here, please make sure you did receive a code, especially if you don't have a local mobile number to call them with and want to avoid huge roaming charges.||The property: I can see that this was a beautiful family mansion in the 1940s. Unfortunately it seemed no renovation has been done since then. It is riddled with rust, mold, worn carpet and furnitures, and rotten wood. It felt like entering a museum from the WWII era. It was clean enough though, as long as you don't look too closely.||Walls are also very thin, so good luck if you have early risers neighbours.||Housekeeping: this area is quite lacking I'm afraid. When attempting to use the coffee machine, I found that the inside was covered with some fine herb-like leaves. So I took it to the bathroom to rinse, and what came out was 2 big dirt-like lumps. Upon closer inspection, they appeared to be old tea bags that perhaps the previous occupants decided to throw into the machine, and have been there for God knows how long. I was shocked and beyond disgusted at that point and could not bring myself to pick them up. The owner's father apologized profusely, cleaned the mess and the coffee machine for us, but I couldn't bring myself to touch the thing for the rest of my stay.||That night, we also intended to drink the hot chocolate they provided in the room, only to find out that it has expired in April 2018 (5 months ago).||As for the positives, the location is great. Quite close to shops, laundry, gas stations, but you do need a car as it is up a hill. Views from the room was...

If you're staying in Hilo, this is the place to stay, hands down. Beautiful views from pretty much all rooms in a cozy and comfortable old home. Super easy to come and go with the system they have, and it is literally right off a main road running down to Kamehameha avenue. Add to that the pretty yard and lanai area, pleasant and helpful owners and staff and a very reasonable price point... I can't imagine staying anywhere else. I had a wonderful stay and if I'm ever in Hilo again, I'll be coming back for sure.

I did want to address two things as regards negative reviews:

It seems that in the past there may have been different management and things might not have been so rosy. I can assure you, if my review hasn't already, any past issues are just that: the past.

As for the whole territorial neighbors schtick some people have gone with? Baloney. No issue from any of the neighbors (even though it seems some guests have given them issues and I watched it happen.) Just be pono (respectful) and use your brain and you'll be fine. Parking is definitely tight, but there's a clear delineation between 57 Hina St. (The Vacation Rental) and the neighbors. They were also very polite when people were out of line, so.

Great, cozy place to stay, the owners seem like great people, and you can even walk to town pretty easy if you don't feel like getting the car out (just...

This is not a safe place to stay for travelers. If you stay at this place, you will find yourself surrounded by some angry neighbors who are watching you all the time and may repel you at any time. We stayed at this place for one night. The parking lot was small and full so we tried to make u turn.Then a neighbor came out and warned us not to step on his private property. For god sake we were just driving on the road. And there was no sign indicating the boundary between the hotel and his property. We said sorry immediately and promised not to across the line he told us. But he wouldn’t let us go, and educated us for more than one minute. He said he was always disturbed by the guests of this rental place and his car was just hit by a guest. We asked him to talk to the hotel. Then he got super mad and started to say some dirty words. He said he owned half of the road and he’d not going to let people drive on his road, and he’d going to call the police We couldn’t say anything other than apologies because we didn’t want to hit into any trouble and waste more time on this. We apologized again and again. But we don’t even know why we need to apologize for the hotel and other previous guests. The hotel and the lord own us an apology. This is the most unpleasant experience we...