Hilton St. Petersburg Carillon Park — Hotel in Saint Petersburg

A business-type hotel, in an easy-access location with a lovely lakeside. But poor architectural decisions make its location much less enjoyable, & staffing / staff training were bad to unacceptable during our two day stay. It's also not near anything specific.

We didn't get any acknowledgement of hilton status (gold that posted over to diamond during the stay). Only minor room upgrade offered (on asking) even though the hotel wasn't full. We asked for & were finally given the water normally offered...at checkout.

Staffing: Nobody at the front desk on late-evening check-in. Had to call out to get somebody to emerge from the back room.

On check-out, one harried employee was dealing with EVERYTHING...phone calls, fetching towels from the housekeeping closets for guests who hadn't gotten their rooms serviced, checkin/checkout, and was clearly overwhelmed & exhausted. She was doing a good job but should not have been put in that situation. A hotel this size should know how to staff its front desk.

Restaurant: Despite only doing breakfast in a full-service facility, they were overwhelmed to the point of defeat. Two employees shuffling slowly, all tables dirty, despite only a few neglected tables still seated. We asked for menus, but left when 15 minutes later when nobody had returned to check on us. Hotel breakfast is meant to be snappy & easy, not a source of despair.

Very good: Beautiful airy lobby. Nice artwork. Multiple exits onto a promenade over the lake. Cool pathways over the lake for walking & nature spotting.

Good: Comfortable (if bland) hilton-standard rooms. Easy, free parking. Highway & airport access are simple from here.

Bad: Understaffed, undertrained. Bad architectural choices make many rooms undesirable.

Very Bad: Unusable breakfast service, very loud air exchangers make balconies unusable.

Architecturally, this hotel made really terrible choices. The wings of the hotel face into the parking lot, so more rooms have an asphalt view than a lake view. Those parking-lot-side balconies? Forget even enjoying the fresh air, there's a REALLY loud air exchanger running somewhere below. Oh, and the rooftops are as plain as can be. Despite all the rooms looking down on them, they didn't finish them in any fashion at all. Maybe the builder fired the architect before the place was done?

The hotel can't do anything about the poor design now, sadly. BUT they could fix the noise issue by baffling, replacing, or relocating the noisy hardware.

This is the kind of place that would be pleasing to hold a business event: easy highway access, something to look at outside, lots of parking. Lots of space to "play" outside, pleasant spaces for light laptop work. Based on my experience, I wouldn't suggest staying here unless they completely rework their staffing situation, and then insist on a...

In December of 2024, I reached out to the group sales manager about reserving a large block of rooms for my wedding in February of 2026. On December 10th, she emailed me, "We would love to host your block of rooms! We can offer 10 rooms for a courtesy contract and add more as needed based on availability." We then emailed back and forth and spoke in more detail about it; she told me at that point it was too early to send an official reservation link, as that typically opens up ~ 1 year in advance, so to reach out to her the beginning of March of 2025 to finalize the reservation link. I reached out to her on March 13th to finalize the reservation link. I stopped in in-person to meet her the 14th and we finalized my room block reservation that day, contracts signed and all. I also reserved event spaces at the hotel for "Welcome Drinks" the night before my wedding and an "After Party" the night after my wedding. I was so excited and relieved to had made these plans. We are having over an 100-person wedding with almost all guests coming from out of town, and had been searching for months for a hotel in this area that could accommodate our guest count, Welcome Drinks and an After Party. That same day the 14th, we got our reservation link, and myself, along with at least 5+ other guests for my wedding made a reservation that same day.

Today, two weeks later, she called to tell me that she made a mistake in finalizing our contract, as she just realized the hotel has a large group contracted with them for the weekend of our wedding that have 225 of the 227 hotel rooms booked up for the Friday night of the weekend we needed to stay. Apparently they have a 5 year contract with this group, so there was nothing she could do, and they could no longer accommodate our hotel block. I am pretty heartbroken and devastated. I had told all my guests about the hotel, put it on my wedding website, spent countless hours researching things to do close by and catered my entire "Things to Do" on my wedding website around this hotel location. We are at a loss of where to go from here, as we had toured and visited countless other hotels in this area, all of which were not working out for what we were needing. All of this could have been avoided if I had been let known in December of 2024 when I reached out that this hotel was not an option. I will likely never be booking Hilton hotels...

Ron at the front desk turned our vacation around from bad to wonderful. After dealing with a hectic day at home, Ron was able to find us the perfect room overlooking the Carillon Park Reserve. When you go on vacation, it is because you want to be able to get away from home and find a place where you can recharge. When you come to this hotel, that is exactly what you will find, peace and relaxation, with no worries. The hotel looks great and it has a full decked out Starbucks in the lobby area. It was closed when we checked in at 1am, but just knowing it was there brought a smile to my face. In addition there is a full restaurant in the lobby area too. Once we got to sleep, it was peaceful and no one disturbed us. It is hard to find a hotel with a cleaning service who isn't trying to get in the room every hour in morning regardless if you have the privacy sign up or not. Thank you for doing a great job. The rooms are beautifully decorated and layed out well. The only problems so far is that the living room area doesn't cool as well as the bedroom area, but I am fine with that. The bed is hard and firm. We obviously sleep on a very soft mattress that cradles our bodies while sleeping. That is not the case here, but still, it is "hard" to appease everyone. Things that would be nice would be a fan in the bathroom and not having the air handler intake right out side the bathroom. Also, it would be nice to have a shower head on a hose system. A fixed shower head seems so dated. There is a wooden walkway around the whole lake and and a walkway that that is lit up at night that goes to the Carillon Park reserve where you find this giant tower filled with bells. There is some need of maintenance on the pool area as the area around the drains are discolored. But after surviving the Covid epidemic, many places lost millions in sales due to lack of vacationing. I have not found 1 place that wasn't affected, from places that closed down, to food shortages, to restaurants changing their menus to hotels and parks not having enough workers to take care of everything. So while this hotel may need some tlc, everywhere needs tlc too. Thank you Hilton for making this truly a wonderful vacation away from stress and a time...