Hilton Garden Inn Portsmouth Downtown — Hotel in Portsmouth

Clean and quiet, sort of.

My bank recently decided to end its rewards program. So much for the Roomba vacuum, I was hoarding my points for. Anyway, I had to cash in or lose out. The best deal was two $100 gift cards for a few different hotel chains and airlines. Being a Hilton guy, the choice was easy. Living during Covid-19 did not give my wife and me much choice in destinations. We happily decided on an overnight, masked up like Butch and Sundance, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, would ease some of the accumulated "educating our kids at home without teaching degrees" stress. As we discovered this summer, Portsmouth is a beautiful little gem of a town with more restaurants than days in a month and enough specialty gift shops to keep the US out of a trade war with China.

Being the bearers of Hilton Gift cards, we decided to splurge and stay in the center of town at the Hilton Garden Inn. I am a huge fan of Hilton Garden Inns, having stayed at countless properties on business throughout the years. On the surface, this property is no different than the others, but the stay was marred, expectedly, by Covid-19: no breakfast, no bar, no restaurant, no pool, and "modified" Housekeeping. The lack of amenities does nothing to the price, by the way. Both Hilton and the management company that owns these locations are not doing much to lure in customers through discounts. On the other hand, revenue is way down, and the bills need to be paid. So, I rather expected above-average service. It is, after all, the only tool left in the toolbox. Check-in was fast but clinical rather than friendly. The only acknowledgment I received for being a Hilton Gold member was a couple of water bottles pushed through the hole in the plexiglass shield.

The first thing you notice walking through the Hotel's halls are the blue seals on every door. It is reminiscent of the plastic seals on the lids of jars in the supermarket; guarantee of freshness, or in this case, cleanliness. When we got to our room, we dropped our stuff and quickly got ready to go back out to take advantage of the shops before everything closed at 6 pm, early but right timing because we had a 6:15 dinner reservation (look for that review of Ristorante Massimo!). I noticed the thrum in the room. It sounded like a clothes dryer on steroids in need of a WD40 bath. I did not give it much thought.

We were a room or two down from the housekeeping room, and I figured the noise was coming from there and would go away by 5 pm. That never happened. When we returned from dinner around 9 pm and got ready for bed, that constant, loud noise was still droning on. It was too late to want to change rooms, and I was hoping that it would not go all night. My bad. It was still going the next morning. I mentioned this during checkout to a Manager (who had to be called because we were paying with gift cards); he said he would check on it, that's it. No apology, no regrets. I expected more, not because I am a Hilton Honors Gold Member, but because it's tough enough nowadays to attract business. On a side note, the mattress was the most uncomfortable I have ever slept on in a Hilton Property. Rock hard.

So, what is the takeaway? Will I return to this property? Maybe, if I am using points. There are many options in and around Portsmouth, including the Homewood Suites we spent a week this summer. Perhaps when the yoke of Covid-19 is gone, the Hilton Garden Inn will be a brighter, friendlier place. But right now,...

The General Manager of this hotel, Troy Bergeron, completely ruined our stay in Portsmouth.

We booked a room through BringFido. When we arrived the hotel was very shabby. A complete mess in need of some serious TLC. We were given Room 306. The room was filthy with stains all over the floor, a disintegrating comforter on the bed, damaged furniture everywhere and torn window curtains. See pics.

We left our bags packed and headed down to reception. On the way we noticed walls, lighting fixtures, elevators etc in similar condition. We knew right away this was not the hotel for us. We asked to speak to the manager, who turned out to be Troy, and we consciously spoke to him in a quiet tone so as to not influence other guests at the hotel. We weren’t looking to cause problems for the hotel other than to get a refund so we could find somewhere else to stay.

Troy informed us that since we booked through Expedia (in partnership with BringFido) we would have to request the refund through them. So, we called BringFido and they offered us a full refund as long as they received a verbal authorization from the hotel to issue said refund. As the situation developed on my phone, I was placed on hold while Expedia called the hotel and spoke to Troy directly. We were told he denied us a refund. We asked the front desk to get him and that we wanted to speak to him. Like the weasel that he his, he hid from us for almost :30 minutes. Realizing we weren’t going to leave, he finally came out while we had BringFido on speaker phone, and we kindly asked that he authorize the refund. He flat out said “No”. We were a bit shocked and obviously became perturbed. The BringFido agent was totally shocked. We asked if he was willing to jeopardize thousands of dollars of future business by us leaving a bad review over one night of $350 for a room we were not going to stay in. He said he didn’t care if we write a review.

This little man does not belong in the hospitality business. I have never encountered someone like this. He’s a borderline crook, who essentially stole our money in exchange for no services provided to us.

Needless to say, we did not stay the night. We found a lovely room next nearby. We are contacting BringFido, Expedia, Hilton, AmericanExpress in hopes of a refund. But truly at this point I don’t even care about the money so much as I care that everyone who may possibly book this hotel knows what a horrible person this guy is and the condition of the property is a direct reflection of it’s Manager. We did nothing wrong but expect more from the hotel, and a good will refund would have gone a long way towards our feelings about Hilton. Instead the opposite has occurred. Troy should look for work in a non-customer facing industry. He is not...

When I called to make the reservation I was stunned by the price, it was easily twice what my wife and I spent a couple years ago for a spur of the moment overnight but.... Covid? I checked around and found it's comparable to other places in the area so... Okay. Was 30% higher than a place right on the beach in Rockport ma though, same night as well.

When we got there to check in we found out that the restaurant and lounge are closed Monday and Tuesday, didn't say that online! Says online that "Cooked to order breakfast available DAILY from 6 to 10am for a fee" We were staying Monday night so nothing tonight and no breakfast tomorrow. They did offer a "breakfast box" so we'll give that a try.

We head off to the room. It's the absolute furthest from the elevator. Are they fully booked? Didn't appear so.

Go to enter the room and a little difficulty opening the door with the key card but after two or three tries we're in. My wife yells from the bathroom that there's a big hair in the sink. Ugh.

On the way back to the room after having dinner my wife suggested checking out the gym, she likes to ride our exercise bike at home so why not here. We peaked through the window and see there's a bike, two elliptical machines, and three treadmills. We go to the room (most trouble getting in this trip), change and head back to the gym. Now we find that only one of the elliptical machines and one treadmill don't have an out of order sign on them but that's okay because the bike is the main objective and that doesn't have a sign on it. Well we find that "in order" means they sorta work, her machine does not keep track of time or anything correctly, neither does the elliptical I try but we are able to exercise for a while anyway.

Back to the room and a few tries we're in. Next morning and off to the lobby for the breakfast box only to find it's two boiled eggs, a bagel (no way to toast it?) with cream cheese, a yogurt, and a muffin. No thanks.

Go to take a shower and find that the handheld thing didn't work, turning the control I could see the hose move but water did not come out, maybe there was a release? Just figured it was another sorta working thing and gave up. There was a trim piece that was floating around between the faucet and the diverter, didn't effect the function but just another broken thing to make it feel like a less than three star accomodations.

Really disappointed this trip, will not be going...