Hilton Grand Vacations Club Ocean Tower Waikoloa Village — Hotel in Hawaii

Our worst vacation, ever!

We usually stay at Hiltons, because the service and quality is solid. We knew we were taking a risk, when the Hilton booking agent suggested we take advantage of a great offer he had, with the catch being we had to listen to their new timeshare sales pitch. But I had seen pictures of the resort in the past – it had dolphins. We were intrigued.

We purchased the deal because it was a great offer on a world class resort by Hilton, or so we thought. As the time drew nearer for our Hawaii vacation, we were eagerly anticipating a huge decision: should we order a club sandwich or the chicken Caesar at the pool each day….

Unfortunately, that decision was not an option. There is no bar or restaurant staff at any of the pools, so you cannot have a resort experience. If you want food or drinks, you have to get up and go find it at one of a few overpriced mediocre restaurants/express deli. And forget about a cocktail with a little umbrella in it.… There are signs saying you will be charged for any towels you don't return, and definitely don't walk on the tram tracks.

Ok!

The ‘resort’ complex is a vast sprawling campus of 3-4 buildings strung together by a Disneyland style train to mitigate the mile-long walks everywhere. It runs incredibly slowly though, and you can hear it coming because it's AC is so loud. One time we were stuck in the only cabin that didn't have AC. Honestly, make it open air, and cut out the AC.

Because we purchased the special timeshare pitch package, we knew we'd be stuck in a crappy room. It had actually been updated, and the kitchen amenities were good: large fridge, microwave, sink, coffee maker (but only 2 bags of coffee for a five-day stay), instant hot water, a toaster, a kettle, cutlery, cutting board, paper towels, soap, and sponge. Also, a toto toilet.

You are asked to cast your device to watch any movies, but our TV could not be found, and we never were able to make it work.

The worst part about our room, however, was that it looked out onto another building with a large greenway in between us. The greenway had a small hut where every single smoking guest and employee decided to have their secret smoke. The property is non-smoking so all the smokers have to find secret spots to get their fix. The hotel knows this as there is actually an ash can placed there for them. Anyway, there's nothing quite like experiencing a constant stream of guests outside your room secretly smoking in a resort that is non-smoking.

The famous breakfast buffet was $55pp, but we never got to try it. On the morning we went to try it at about 9:15a.m., it had plenty of tables open, but Shea told us it would be at least 25-30 minutes wait. This was a Tuesday. We walked around the food stations to see what we got for our money: it was nothing special. It had the typical eggs, bacon, potatoes, but then other things like fried rice. But there was no specialty offerings like smoked salmon, or eggs Benedict. There wasn't even an omelette station. You had to make your own waffle, like at motel 6. When we circled back to Shea after 5 mins to see if she could actually seat us, she said quite proudly that we would definitely need to wait. How you can have empty tables yet still have to wait to be seated is beyond us. We left and made some toast in our room.

As if all this wasnt a huge disappointment of an experience, we had to still sit thru the timeshare presentation. We were taken off-site to another location. JP seemed aimiable enough, but it was hard not to express our frustration, and when we told him we only had 1.5 hours to give him (as per the booking rep), he immediately responded with, “it's a minimum of 2 hours, and if you can't give us this time, we can certainly charge you full price for your vacation.” If that isn't a threat, I don't know what is. I mean, he was now saying we had to pay full price to watch the stream of smokers sending cigarette smoke into our room on a daily basis if we didnt listen to him? You couldn't pay me to...

We and our two friends (all in our late 20s) received a vacation package offer to stay at the Ocean Tower at a somewhat discounted rate, in exchange for sitting through a timeshare sales presentation at the end of the stay. For the price we paid, we expected a moderate level of comfort, but we ended up experiencing a multitude of issues and inconveniences that leads us to advise others against making a similar decision if given this offer.

Overall, the quality of the resort facilities feels very outdated, the layout of the resort is very inconvenient if you plan to explore the island during your stay, the quality and cleanliness of the rooms is disappointing, and the communications and information we received was poor or misleading. They forced us to make a decision on this “live offer” on the spot without giving information on the facilities, and didn’t communicate any details ahead of our check-in.

When we arrived, we quickly discovered that while the main lobby is grand and renovated, pretty much everything else is not. The check-in process took us over an hour to figure out where to park our car, to carry our luggage to the lobby, wait for a monorail to take us halfway to our building (the Ocean Tower), and walk the rest because the other rail stops are closed. The doors of the rooms right next to the lobby look nice, but these rooms are only for timeshare owners, and regular guests like us have to walk all the way to the back corner to the majority of the rooms, which are dingy and outdated. The first room we got had a broken doorknob in the bathroom, the shower head was a bit broken, and we had issues with noise insulation throughout the day and night (we were woken up by people upstairs, as well as loud birds outside at 4am).

The next day we switched rooms to the only other available room (as we were told), which was similar in quality, with slightly smaller furniture, but with working bathroom fixtures. We also experienced noise issues in this room, unfortunately. They only offer room cleaning on Wednesdays and Fridays, which meant our room was only cleaned once during our five-night stay. We saw the cleaning staff leave our door wide open while they were cleaning, and that night we had the unpleasant surprise of finding a cockroach in our room. The staff was fairly quick to respond to our call, and helped us to get rid of it, but we found another the next night. Overall the cleanliness level of our room reminds me more of a motel, rather than a Hilton hotel. The sales agent at the end of our stay responded to this by saying that he knows the Ocean Tower is bad, but used that as a motivation to try to get us to upgrade to their timeshare program, which he said has nicer rooms.

Additional issues we discovered about this resort: Transportation within the resort is limited; it takes 15 minutes or more of walking to get from your room to the parking lot. They have a monorail, but it is infrequent, and about the same speed as walking. There is also an express shuttle, which we used a couple of times, but it only operates from 10am to 8pm, and doesn’t allow for luggage transportation. Another issue is that there aren’t many dining options within the resort (only one that we saw). Given that it takes so long to get out of the resort, it would be nice if there were more to do within the resort. We received no information (not even a brochure) upon check-in about the facilities and activities available in the resort. Finally, we learned upon arrival that there is a $44/day fee for self-parking in the only lot located on the property, which is actually quite far from the rooms.

Overall, the entire experience felt a bit predatory; luring guests in with a nice sounding vacation package, only to discover when you arrive that the quality doesn’t match up with the “Hilton” brand name. This makes us hesitant to stay with Hilton in the future, as we no longer trust the brand the...

Full review as an owner and travel agent. I recommend visiting, but with a number of disclaimers. Location: 20-25 minute drive from the airport. Many restaurants are not marked, even the home depot was hidden. There is on-site grocery, and grocery in Waikoloa. I did not experience sticker shock anywhere. About 3mins from Hilton at Island Deli.. Island Gourmet markets at queens marketplace.. is probably the best food on the island without having to travel far. I recommend that food for most of your meals. Trust me. Best bang for your buck. Starbucks is also over there. Everything you literally need is within 20 minutes.

Parking: Not directly disclosed up front. It's $48 per day, or $55 for Valet not including tips. Parking costed more than our rental. Consider property size, how much stuff you have, how hot it is, etc.. to decide whether to valet or not. It's an extra 200 yards to the parking lot.

Property/entertainment: It's probably the most meticulously detailed Hilton property I have stayed at up to this point. Kudos to the landscaping teams. There is enough to do around the property for a few days without touching the highway. There are historic hiking trails through lava fields, petroglyphs, a clean lagoon to swim, snorkel, paddleboard.. some nice swimming pools and what looked like a sand pool.. the ocean is calm in a couple of spots to snorkel and swim. The property has their own dolphins which was actually neat. They have a beautiful golf course.. I think it was like 27 holes when I asked. About $140 a round if I remember. Buddha point has the best sunset.

I am not impressed with the Luau on property.. it's been downgraded twice and is misrepresented in photos. It was an okay performance, but the vibe felt like a Vegas bingo parlor performance. Different than any other that we attended. Cramped seating, HGV owners sit in the back, the food is for kids first but adults grab food and tell them it's for kids.. The priority sections get food second.. then the rear tables.. They tried hard, but the food could not stay stocked and was low quality at that point. The drinks were okay, but the bartender was horrible to everyone. Not worth $400+.

Be advised if you book ocean tower.. You have to check in at ocean tower.. it is a 10-15 minute walk, all in the shade. There is a Disney style tram that you can wait on.. It could take 10-30 minutes to get to ocean tower depending where it is. Also, It moves slowly.. myself and my wife walked faster than the tram. The walk was more time efficient, but very tiring with equipment. The birds hanging out in the middle of ocean tower were worse than cicadas, very loud.

Room: We 100% booked a room with a King bed.. they gave us a room with two queen beds. We made it work, but not great for two HGV owners on an anniversary vacation that booked 8 months ahead of time. We immediately called, and they could not help us. They would not reimburse anything, make it up to us, comp our parking.. nothing. So confirm your rooms at this property before coming. The room itself was otherwise okay. It was clean, everything was there.

Other Entertainment: There is SOO much to do on Kona.. go snorkeling to see the manta rays.. We recommend Aquatic Life Divers for day or night excursions. Absolutely the greatest experience on the island. Drive around the island.. buy passes for Volcano National Park.. there are a ton of amazing, beautiful, and intriguing opportunities.

Between the parking, the wrong room on our anniversary, the distance of the room, low quality food with high prices.. that's embarrassing to represent that as an owner and travel agent. It only gets a 3-star because the landscaping team makes that property look better than any other Hilton property I have visited in the...