Home2 Suites by Hilton Orlando Downtown — Hotel in Orlando

EXTREME RISK OF VEHICLE VANDALISM!!!

Let me begin by saying I am a Hilton Diamond Member and travel frequently for work.

I stayed 2 nights at this property in April. As others have noted, the valet parking isn’t clear when you book. You need to dig through all the details about the hotel to find this information.

On the first night of my stay, my car was vandalized in the parking structure used by the valet company. When I woke in the morning to Onstar alerts on my phone notifying me of the possible vandalism, I walked with a valet parking attendant to look at my car. We discovered a shattered window and a variety of missing items, including a $2800 case with materials I use for my work. The police had made an arrest and left a notification on my car. When I asked the parking attendant how it would happen that the police would have made an arrest without me notifying them, the attendant replied, “This parking structure has known crime problems and the police drive through on occasion to attempt to diminish the crime”. I asked about cameras – no, no cameras in the structure.

I returned to the hotel and the front desk clerk gave me the manager’s card and said I could talk with her when she arrived at 9am. Shortly after 9, I asked to speak with the manager – Monique. She sent the parking company manager to speak with me. This person had me complete a claim form and said the parking charges would be removed from my bill. The hotel manager did not speak with me.

My day was chaos with getting my damaged car to a repair shop and renting a car for use during the repair process. I was forced to cancel multiple meetings with clients.

When I checked out, I asked to see a copy of my bill and discovered one parking charge was still on there. The front desk clerk took my bill to the manager – this office is in full view of the front desk and Monique could clearly see I was standing at the front desk. She removed the charge, but never came to speak with me. No apology. No acknowledgment of what happened.

The hotel contracts with the valet parking company and is, at least, partially at fault. The property crime rate for this zip code is 86.6 out of 100, with a national average in the mid 30’s. Knowing the high property crime rate and knowing the structure itself has issues, the hotel could work with the valet company to ensure the cars and belongings of their guests are more secure. Installation of cameras would be a deterrent.

Since the manager did not speak with me when I was at the property, I called Hilton customer service. They escalated it back to the owner and manager of the property and said I would receive a response in 3 days. After 6 days, and leaving multiple messages for the manager myself, I finally received a phone call. She stated the hotel is not responsible, although she does have a full understanding of the extremely high crime rate in the area. She refused to offer any type of compensation for all the inconvenience I have experienced.

I am out, at least, $1,800 in repair and car rental costs. Not to mention the stolen items. The parking company has said they are not at fault either. Both the hotel and parking company have leverage over the owner of the parking structure to improve the safety, yet they have not leveraged...

My man and I stayed here for 5 nights about a month ago. We stayed in the Home2 as we needed a full suite. The hotel is beautiful, the breakfast buffet is great, as is the gym, the staff are really nice, and the rooms and bathrooms are nice. Also, the location can’t be beat—we walked to Lake Eola every day. So why only 2 stars? The bed was HORRIBLE, like really REALLY horrible. This is seemingly a problem with all of the Hiltons we’ve been staying in lately. This is just nuts to us because people literally stay in hotels to have a place to sleep—and they spend hours on the bed for exactly that purpose. A restful night of sleep is so very important. Please, for the love of God, get newer, or at least more comfortable beds. (My man builds hotels and said they almost always go super cheap on the mattresses…what?!?! Literally what people are paying you for to stay there!!) The bed was so worn out—and the dips in it were so bad—that both of us were fighting the dips every. single. night. all. night. long.!!! No exaggeration. Waking up ALL NIGHT LONG sucks beyond description. We couldn’t escape the dips though, even in a king sized bed. I haven’t slept that terribly in a while (even worse than our last stay at a Doubletree). My man has zero sleep issues and can sleep like the dead pretty much anywhere, and he slept terribly, too!!! We both woke up with bilateral hip pain all night long and every morning... The polyester “featherbed” that all Hiltons use for comforters is something we will NEVER EVER understand, especially in FL!!! You have to crank the A/C way way cold to be able to even be under the insanely hot, heat-trapping comforter, and then the comforter doesn’t breathe AT ALL, so you absolutely roast underneath it. You have to play a game of “too hot/too cold” literally ALL NIGHT LONG. And this is coming from someone who is always cold! We usually end up having to remove the comforter and use just the sheet, or a blanket if we’re lucky enough to have one in the closet. Also, parking is absolutely and ridiculously way too expensive!!! $35/night is just absurd. The TV… not a single one of the channels matched up with the channel guide, nor the channel info displayed on each channel. It was a guessing game every time we had it on. Crazy! Finally, our room was on the side of the hotel that has a parking garage directly across the street. Every single night during our stay, a super loud group of motorcycles pulls out of the parking garage and blasts off between 10:00-11:00pm. They sit at the stoplight and rev their engines while they wait, and then they blast off, again, when they go. It’s so obnoxious. If you’re an early to bed person, be prepared to be woken up every night. We’ve been staying in Orlando during the week for work for the last 3 weeks following this stay, and we refuse to stay here again, specifically because of the bed and the cost of parking. The other stuff would be tolerable/workable, but we’ve ended up in AirBnbs instead. Better value for the money, more comfortable beds, and free parking, too!! We are Hilton Honors members but will be switching to try Marriotts when we need a hotel and see if they have...

I had the worst, most traumatizing experience at this Home2 Suites. My boyfriend and I are locals and were staying here for a couple nights. Him and I decided to eat and hangout on the patio common area that they have on one of the higher floors. While we were hanging out there on this hot FL summer day, the glass railing BURSTED and CRACKED right next to my head. My boyfriend and I immediately ran back inside because we thought someone had thrown something from below or maybe a gunshot had went off because that’s how loud it was. After running inside, we started asking each other what the heck just happened and we went back outside to assess the situation. After looking it over and going to google for answers, it seemed that the glass railing had just combusted due to thermal exhaustion. A quick google search of “Spontaneous glass breakage” would show the same thing I witnessed that day. I went downstairs to tell the front desk manager what happened so that they could start fixing it immediately to avoid it cracking more and falling on someone below. The manager came off nice and thanked me for letting him know. The next morning, we checked out and after check out, I started getting separate charges from my bank account for hundreds of dollars each from the property. I immediately turned around and went back there to ask why they were charging me. Jeri Loeb Gonzalez, the assistant general manager, was working. She was VERY RUDE, as soon as I addressed my concern, she began dismissing me and treating me like I did something wrong. She stated that those charges were for the glass railing breaking and accused me of doing it. I let her know that I was an employee at Hilton Grand vacations and would never do something like that and risk losing my job. She didn’t believe me and made racist remarks, dismissed me, was being avoidant and eventually called the police on me after I respectfully and calmly told her I would wait to speak to the manager I talked to the night before and advised of the incident when it happened. I told her to please review the cameras so she can see that I didn’t do it. She stated that she couldn’t review it, only the engineer could and she claimed he had done it already but there were no cameras on the patio, only cameras inside and they determined that I broke the glass based off of my reaction (aka my boyfriend running back inside freaking out and scared.) The wrongful charges caused me to be late on my rent and this incident was reported to my job which caused me to get written up and lose my employee discount. They never gave me my money back and refused to investigate the situation deeper and for this, they have earned themselves a potential lawsuit as I am now considering seeking legal advice. Jeri, you deserve to be fired for being racist and refusing to listen to guest concerns, amongst other...