DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Hotel Mt. Laurel — Hotel in Mount Laurel Township

I am writing to express my extreme dissatisfaction with my recent stay at the DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Hotel in Mt. Laurel, NJ on May 3, 2025, where we were attending a wedding. From the moment I made our reservation, I had a feeling this stay would be problematic—and unfortunately, that concern proved valid.||Early Check-In Experience|I requested early check-in well in advance, as we were traveling and needed time to shower and dress for the event. Three days before our arrival, I confirmed this request by phone—only to find it was not recorded. A staff member added the request and instructed me to call back the next day and again on the morning of check-in to speak with a manager.||When I called, I was left on hold for over 43 minutes, then spoke with a dismissive and unhelpful representative. I asked for the manager, Leandra, who also treated the situation with indifference. I was told to call back at noon—which, by then, was far too late for our wedding preparations.||Check-In Chaos|We arrived at 3:30 PM, expecting our 4 PM check-in to proceed smoothly. Instead, we found a chaotic lobby filled with frustrated guests. After a long wait, we finally received our room key—only to discover three women still cleaning the room. We had to wait another 20 minutes inside while they finished, which caused us to miss both scheduled shuttles to the wedding reception.||Poor Management and Staff Conduct|We attempted to speak with a manager, Denise, who was disheveled, unprofessional, and rude to another guest in our presence. She wore no name tag, her shirt was untucked, and her appearance did not reflect the standards of a Hilton property. The only staff member who was kind, professional, and helpful was Darryl at the front desk—he was a bright spot in an otherwise disastrous experience.||Room and Facility Issues|The room had visible damage: a ripped window screen in three places and torn bed sheets.||The air conditioning only worked in the front room; the bedroom was unbearably hot and uncomfortable.||Parking was unavailable for over 30 minutes due to a “furry” event with many attendees not even staying at the hotel.||Checkout was chaotic. The system was down, and I still haven’t received a receipt or a credit for my included breakfast benefit (which comes with my Hilton status).||Food & Cleanliness Concerns|The breakfast buffet was extremely unappetizing. A woman next to us bit into her eggs and spit out something hard.||Cleanliness across the hotel was inconsistent. While the three cleaning staff were polite, it would have been far more efficient to assign them separate rooms instead of working together on one, leading to unnecessary delays.||Overall Impression|I frequently stay at Hilton properties and typically have excellent experiences, but this was deeply disappointing. One mistake is understandable—but the volume of issues, the lack of accountability, and the sheer number of angry guests in the lobby that night were unacceptable.||This wedding should have been a joyful occasion, but the stress caused by this hotel marred the experience not only for us, but also for the wedding party and guests. The bride and groom should never have had to deal with this chaos on their wedding day.||I found it amusing that no one can provide the General Manager's email; instead, I got disconnected. The man is on Linked in but never uses or posts so doubt he would see anything there. Try a Google search for Dean Sampson and it provides partial emails. ||I don’t mind what others choose to do, as long as they’re being safe and respectful, and it doesn’t interfere with me or my family. For example, we recently encountered a Furry convention. Some participants explained that for them, it’s similar to a fraternity—an outlet to express themselves artistically, feel free, and enjoy the social experience, including drinking. That’s perfectly fine, as long as it’s done responsibly.||However, what concerned me was an incident that happened afterward. As we were coming down the elevator, we saw a person dressed in a costume—barely clothed—on all fours being walked by another individual like a dog. This is not appropriate for children to witness. There were several kids by the pool, and many were pointing and clearly unsure how to react.||I believe it's important to maintain boundaries in public spaces, especially where families and children are present. Everyone deserves the freedom to express themselves, but there should also be consideration for the environment and those around them. The hotel should have stepped in. Another example is a bunch of them sitting on the lobby floor playing games, which interferes with guests trying to check out. I have never seen so many frustrated and angry guests in one place. ||At the very least, I expect a refund or appropriate compensation for this unacceptable stay. I also request a full receipt and confirmation of my breakfast credit. Thinking that is a joke, as I can't even get a representative to stay on the phone without being put on hold multiple...

My family and I booked this hotel out for my wedding. I am the groom. We had booked the hotel for 7/5 and 7/6.

The incompetence of this hotel and its staff was a huge dampener on our special day. I will never trust DoubleTree again after this. The experience was absolutely horrifying.

0. LYING ABOUT RENOVATIONS

We were told when we booked this hotel months ago that the renovations would be complete by the time of the wedding. That was not the case. There were room range signs and bathroom signs lying on the floor. Keep in mind that we had booked a large block of rooms for an Indian wedding. The hotel did not stay true to their word nor did they care about being presentable for this wedding at all.

1. AC NOT WORKING

The biggest problem that mostly all guests suffered from was the AC not working. Even though the AC was set to the minimum setting of 65 in my room, it would not get cooler than 75 degrees, and the temperature sometimes hovered close to 80. A whole army of guests told me about this throughout the weekend. I was staying in a newly renovated room, but I could only feel the airflow in the attached suite area and the bedroom remained hot and humid, making it hard to sleep. Many of my guests in the wedding party complained about this. The hotel staff said that they would “send engineers to fix it” but the problem remained throughout the weekend. If you look in the review history, this has been a problem at the hotel for a while now, but the hotel has chosen to leave it unaddressed. It’s worth noting that even though the climate in NJ was hot this weekend, other buildings such as our wedding venue were easily able to handle it. And these temperatures are not abnormal for NJ in the summertime. This is total negligence on the hotel’s part.

2. DOORS NOT WORKING

The night before my wedding, I was getting ready to sleep. I knew that I would only get ~4 hours of sleep because I had to wake up early to get ready. Little did I know that this would be the least of my problems. After coming back from our wedding event, my father was locked out of his room, with all of our wedding outfits and valuable jewelry stuck inside. The staff attempted to remake the room keys, but that did not fix the issue. I sat in the hallway with my dad and brother for over 1 hour while begging the staff to do something. The staff was completely incompetent. They did not show any empathy or act in an appropriate manner. In fact, the staff alarmed us further by saying that it’ll be hard to get a hold of someone at this hour and the worst case scenario is to call the fire department. I had to get very upset at the staff and suggest that they call the fire department immediately before they chose to take any action. After waiting for over an hour, the solution to the problem turned out that the electronics in the door were out of battery. I do not know what the staff was doing that took them so long to figure this out. The solution was to manually connect a battery. This is something that the staff should have been briefed on. Note that there were also other rooms suffering from the same issue. After we finally got the door open, the staff raised their voice at my family and treated us very poorly when we were still unhappy with the service after the door was opened. They did not seem to comprehend that this is completely unacceptable and should never have happened. They expected us to be satisfied with their slow, sloppy, and rude response to this crisis. After this incident, I got

Staying here was a terrible experience, and trying to get the issues resolved has been an equally poor experience.

We stayed here as a part of a hotel block for a wedding we were in, the issues for ourselves and our friends and family were extensive.

Another member of the bridal party had bed bugs in their room and bites from head to toe. As members of the bridal party all closely intermingled for days and spent extensive time in each other's rooms, this left us and others exposed to beg bugs.

When the bed bug exposure was brought up to staff, they were completely ignorant and dismissive. They said it's impossible to be exposed to bed bugs because we didn't sleep in the room, and were generally very uneducated about the matter. We ended up needing to quarantine our bags, have things dry cleaned, and take time, effort, and money to ensure we did not bring bed bugs home with us.

On the hottest weekend of the year, AC was broken in multiple rooms, and even rooms with "working" AC like ours still got incredibly hot and were very uncomfortable to spend time in.

My sister was checked in to a room that reeked of smoke. When she called the front desk, they rudely told her it was "impossible" as the property was nonsmoking and ignored her concerns. We had to wait for over 30 minutes in line to speak to management in person as she was dismissed over the phone. This follows a pattern of issues being ignored and staff being rude.

The SECOND room my sister was moved to was fully under construction. We walked in with bags and almost knocked over ladders placed carelessly against the walls. There were paint buckets everywhere, construction equipment, and even an unflushed toilet. Overall, it took multiple hours for my sister to be moved to a room that was clean and safe.

The hotel was under construction and generally not well kept. Maintenance felt like an after thought, things were dirty, and hotel issues were handled poorly by staff.

When I tried to resolved these issues after our stay, it was like pulling teeth. Our family members were offered substantial refunds for the same experience, yet we were not offered the same. When I brought this up, the manager deflected, saying that they could not speak about other guests and I had no way of proving this - despite the fact I had proof of their refunds.

I had a case opened, and the hotel failed to CC me on communications, repeatedly failed to respond in the timeframe set by Hilton, and I spent hours on hold trying to get ahold of them. The manager was repeatedly not available or not on the property when I called to try and follow up. They have been rude and dismissive, acting like all of the collective issues we dealt with were minor problems not worthy of their time, while they were massive stressors and problems during a very busy wedding weekend.

I'm writing this review because, over a month later, there has been no satisfactory resolution to this issue. I would caution anyone from staying here, and I'm shocked at the lac of professionalism from the staff.

Edit: Hotel staff has responded that they have "Replied to each of my reviews, comments, and emails." which a frustrating and misleading.

I had to chase responses down. Emails were sent without CCing me, were days late , or I would call multiple times before I received an email response.

My calls and voicemails went repeatedly unanswered. The manager was regularly not on site to take calls or busy, and it was extremely challenging to get a call back.

I spent hours of my time on hold with support, reaching out to the hotel directly, and trying to get a response. The responses I did receive were minimal, and often included incorrect info or ignored my direct questions.

The stay was incredibly poor, as detailed in my review above, and it's disappointing that the ONLY thing the owner can find to say is "we responded to you." - you responded after hours of work on my end to get a response, responses were rude and unhelpful, and no solution was...