Tru by Hilton San Antonio Downtown Riverwalk — Hotel in San Antonio

This was my second trip to San Antonio, and I decided to book at this hotel because I had enough points to get a free room (I travel a lot for work). My wife and I planned just a 2 day/1 night trip on the weekend before New Year’s. We arrived in San Antonio at about 4:30 pm and decided to check in to the hotel first to drop our stuff off before going out for dinner and drinks. The worker at the front desk told us that our room wasn’t ready yet. We were a little surprised by this, since check-in is listed as 3 pm, but they told us it should be ready in 30 minutes so we decided to wait in the lobby. Over 1 hour later and the room still wasn’t ready, and they just kept repeating that they had a limited number of cleaners and it was taking longer than expected to clean the rooms. I asked to speak with a manager, but they said that the manager was not there on the weekends. I’ve seen this pattern with many chains lately, where a business provides poor service and then the people in power are nowhere to be found so the poor front desk person becomes a punching bag for the angry customers. As far as I’m concerned, booking a hotel is a business agreement and the hotel is responsible for holding up their end of the bargain, which includes having a room ready at a pre-specified time. Instead, this hotel chose to reduce both the cleaning staff and the management on site, during a busy holiday weekend, and therefore were not able to meet their obligations. Big chains like Hilton are betting that customers will just bite the bullet and essentially subsidize their cost-cutting efforts by putting up with a later check-in. They over-work their workers, break the agreement with the customer, and hope for the best. Honestly, I didn’t really care about having to check in later, especially since I got the room from points, but that doesn’t change the principle of the matter. FYI there were several others in the exact same boat as us, who DID pay cash for their rooms. To add insult to injury, next morning we requested a later check-out time (2 instead of 12) and they initially refused! They told us that you have to be a Hilton gold member to get a late check-out. So let me get this straight: Hilton can shave 3+ hours off our check-in without consequence, but we have to spend thousands of dollars (I believe gold status requires around 30 nights per year) before we can get 2 hours later check-out? What kind of garbage is that?? The cleaning lady overheard our discussion, and she interrupted the front desk worker and said that a late check-out would be fine. Seriously Hilton, you don’t have any management present on one of the busiest weekends of the year, and leave it up to the cleaning lady to make up for your crummy customer service?

This hotel also tries to screw you on the parking. The website says valet parking only, $25/night. Ok, that isn’t a great price, but I’ve seen worse. The lots between the hotel and the Alamo are similar. Nevertheless, we decided to circle around a bit and we found a lot for $5/night about 1 block east of the hotel, under the over-pass near the highway off-ramp so we parked there. Come to find out, the valet parking isn’t in a separate, secure Hilton parking lot, but is in that same lot. So they charge you an additional 400% ($20 on top of the $5 base lot fee) just to park your car for you and save you a block of driving. No thank you.

On the good side, the rooms were pretty nice and clean (I would hope so, after that wait), and the free breakfast was actually decent. Nothing special, but better than most other hotels I have stayed at recently. Also, the location is quite nice, and within walking distance of both the Alamo and the river walk. Overall, these positives aren’t enough in my opinion to make up for their poor customer service and complete lack of management presence. The free stay was barely worth it; I will not ever be paying money for a...

my rating: 2/5 for a family looking for a nice time. 3/5 for a small couple or single traveler just staying here at night.

upon arrival, this is in a very weird area. not giving the best vibes, and the pictures were slightly different. me and my boyfriend were trying to be a bit frugal on our stay but it’s definitely worth the extra $50 for something with parking on site at the least.

on the website it states there is parking .25 miles from the hotel, they will not specify what they mean if you ask the front desk. they provide no helpful information, just avoid them honestly. they don’t care.

here’s what you DO need to know for parking if you stay here. use street parking/aka meter parking over the valet 10000% it will be significantly cheaper (~.30/hr, we paid $3.00 for 8am-6pm which btw is the only time the meters run, and all day sunday and 6pm-8am the meters are not enforced so go crazy) just don’t forget to buy parking at 8am. we forgot this morning and by 8:45am we paid and hadn’t been towed. we used the meter parking literally on the other side of the street from the entrance (houston st)

we stayed on the fourth floor, and the hallway (wood floor) is uneven and completely shifts/warps under your feet when you walk. it’s scary. our bathroom was out of toiletries. the elevator completely shakes and is terribly unstable during riding if you move at all.

the tv has basic DTV cable, we opted for having amazon send us an hdmi cord so we could watch streaming services over Bar Rescue and Fixer Upper.

another huge thing me and my boyfriend noticed, is this hotel is lowkey not accessibly friendly. we double checked and the website does state there’s handicap parking onsite their “on facility parking”, but what parking? the street? if so, if you park right at the door, you can’t even open a sedan car door without scratching your car door on the massive curb. the typical sidewalk ramp will be at each end of the hotel sidewalk, good luck. the rooms are small, but i’d hope an accessible room is bigger.

the pool is uncomfortable due to the highway literally right next to you, but i appreciate the thought. the string lights did not work out there, and it was quite dark at night. no hot tub but maybe i’m being picky atp.

i’ve been here since 3/23 and staying until 3/27, as of today (3/25) the yogurt does not work during breakfast, and honestly idk if i want it to because it’s a metal machine. the breakfast is eggs, bacon, cereal (only gluten free is cheerios), oatmeal, waffles, milk, juice and coffee. i was unimpressed honestly. again, pay $50 more for drury plaza please. this was sad.

they do have a small “snack bar” of overpriced snacks and otc medications, avoid this if you can!! cvs on river walk is right there.

me and boyfriend utilized the scooters, we enjoyed them but they are a bit overpriced. check out groupon for eryd deals and just deals in general. if you’re here before you’ve booked, groupon even has hotel deals on the river walk better than this. i beg you.

if you’re abled and/or young and just hanging here for fun, i recommend it for a cheap stay. i hope you get a good room like we did, unlike the others mentioning bugs and mold (be warned.)

if you need accessibility features, better breakfast, a hot tub, parking on site, and just a better MF stay in general: choose anything else and pay the extra money for it.

me and my boyfriend decided leaving this review was worth it so other people do not fall for the valet like we did, and i hope the hotel leaves this up and honestly takes the criticism well and makes their...

I travel for work and have stayed in many hotels post pandemic. This was a family trip. We stayed at this property for 4 nights and being a Diamond member, this hotel does not meet Hilton standards. I will say, the staff was very friendly. When you 'asked' them for something, they did respond. Only the valet, Ryan, went out of his way to help the front desk staff and go above and beyond his duties to make sure any guests he encountered were taken care of. The daily breakfast offering was good but guests were having to keep asking for things. Keeping up with the coffee was an issue. The hotel was dirty. During our entire stay, the lobby floor was not kept up very well, we'd see towels and trash on the floor as well as garbage cans overflowing. The elevator needed a good mopping and wipe down. The lobby bathrooms did not have toilet paper. I checked the bathrooms once right after the front desk clerk had used it and still - no toilet paper. The gym was not cleaned at all during our stay. Very few hand sanitizer stations were working. We were not told on our arrival (1st night) that we had to request service for our rooms and there were no signs or notices anywhere. There was a constant shortage of towels. Every night I had to request towels and only on the last night we were able to get wash cloths because I was able to get them from one of the cleaning staff on our floor. I made sure we requested towels each night with front desk to no avail the next day. I also tried to make it easy in that we didn't need the room cleaned - just towels. I know the hotel is short on staff but from my observations a lot of the issues we had could be corrected by the hotel ownership and management team. Having spent time in the industry as a manager, I have several suggestions ; Pay the staff for overtime! Pay the valets to help out and assist with cleaning in the lobby when they are not doing anything instead of sitting on their phones (again Ryan was the exception in that he was constantly helping out). The front desk staff needs at least 2 for breakfast / check out rush to help keep up with breakfast. They need to get away from the computer without having to be asked for something. This involves training. In the gym, at the very least sweep the floors. Put up a sign "Due to staff shortages we ask our guests to please wipe down equipment after use." People will understand and respond. Make sure guests are aware of requesting cleaning - a sign in the room's bathroom. There should be a laundry bucket on each floor for guests to put their dirty towels in (again with a sign in the rooms to do so) so that when rooms are not scheduled to be serviced, the staff can get the towels cleaned so there isn't a shortage. Ownership and management need to step up, roll up their sleeves, and get on site. Again, we are aware of labor shortages but there are ways to work through it. The hotels are not lowering their rates. This property should. This is a failure of ownership and management and I will avoid any hotels they own and run. Which is why it gets a 5. I should be given half my...