Hilton Garden Inn Napa — Hotel in Napa

We spent six days at the Hilton Garden Inn in Napa in early May 2021. The facility is conveniently located on Solano Ave, about five to ten minutes from downtown. We were given a double queen suite overlooking the pool area. The room was spacious and clean. Breakfast in the dining area was generous and well prepared. The head waiter, Billy, was the consummate professional.

There were several areas that could use improvement. The coffee maker in our room never worked properly. The room had still not been cleaned by room service after three days. I was told by the desk clerk that she had forgotten to mention to me that room service had to be requested. Perhaps this was a policy change made during the pandemic. If so, then the door hang tags indicating that you do not want room service should be removed, as they lead you to believe that you'll receive room service unless you decline it.

The lack of room service left us completely out of toilet paper after three days. The front desk was kind enough to offer us one roll. When room service did clean our room, they did not add a second roll of toilet paper, so at the end of our six day stay we were again completely out.

The hinges on the bathroom door squeaked like something out of a haunted house movie. Getting up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night invariably resulted in waking my wife. A little grease on the hingepins would fix that and that would take no more than ten minutes.

The most aggravating experience during our stay involved the re-striping of the parking lot. Paving contractors showed up on the third day of our stay and cordoned off about two thirds of the parking lot. One would assume management would take a quick count of the number of guests at the hotel and instruct the contractors to leave access to that many parking spaces. That did not appear to have happened as we returned to the hotel on at least two separate occasions to find every available parking space filled. This stuff is not rocket science.

The staff appears to be comprised primarily of millenials, with the exception of the aforementioned head waiter. It may be that customer service is a skill that can only be learned through experience. And it may be that it can never be learned, as it involves a fair amount of empathy, which I have found in my experience not to be a universal human characteristic. Still, one hopes the Hilton group is attempting to remediate shortcomings in customer service.

We are happy to finally be able to return to traveling. We had hoped for a more more enjoyable experience from a Hilton hotel. Maybe better days are still a way...

TL:DR - A little pricey during harvest season but great location Near many wineries and minutes to downtown Napa Near lots of shopping - Trader Joe's Whole Foods Target CVS and more Easy access to many freeways Very clean Nice professional staff Free parking but very busy lot

I never give hotels 5 stars but this one really deserves it Erica the GM and her staff are amazing. So friendly professional and helpful. Kate, Billy, Angelique and so many others! But we saw them most - many of them work long hours 7 days a week. The staff doesn't stay no to anything The hotel has been renovated not too long ago so everything is new It's so clean and the staff really takes it over the top. There are so many people cleaning on one floor at once - they work so hard There is a fridge and microwave in the room as well as Keurig but the coffee in the room is not great There is coffee and tea downstairs until 10 am And cookies around 4 pm - wish they offered coffee w/ the cookies - small complaint It can be pricey but you're paying for location The breakfast is very generous $19.95 per day or $12.95 for just the cold bar of fruit yogurt toast bagels sweets etc. Only complaint is breakfast menu doesn't change and the chef under cooks the eggs pretty regularly Happy hour has great prices and generous food - we had a huge plate of chicken fingers and fries and a huge cheese board for about $10 each On Fri and Sat they do a free generous wine tasting from I think 5 - 6:30 pm There is a little mini mart w/ reasonably priced wines water drinks snacks Outdoor pool only and hot tub - opened during winter but pool is not heated Free parking Laundry you can do yourself - about $2.00 a load and $1.50 for dryer. I'm sure they can do it...

2-stars for the lousy front office staff…

Attitude from one of the check in folks. Horrible. Couple in front was obviously feeling good after wine tasting that day. Front office woman had no problem telling them about the free bottle of wine if you liked the place on Facebook, etc. When it was our turn, the woman somehow forgot to tell us about. Check in clearly came with an attitude. So we went to room, there was a funny sewage smell in the hallway, maybe a backed up toilet in an adjacent room being cleaned. We headed back down to request a new room. Went to that room… right next to the elevator and ice machine. Yeah, no. Then went to change room again. Talked to a different staff member that didn’t come with an attitude. Was offered the wine this time. At least this staff wasn’t discriminating like the first. Check out did not come with even a good morning from a third staff member. Getting her to look up and even acknowledge me was challenging. Her cell phone was immensely more important… it looked like TikTok was the attention grabber. What is wrong with the staff here and the management responsible for them. Ah yes, management is off on the weekends, only coming back in on Monday when better behavior likely returns. The only greeting that we got was from a grounds keeper!

As for rooms…. Mostly clean but please change your mop water more often. Getting into the shower, one should not see dirt from the floor coming off one’s feet...