Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort — Hotel in Santa Barbara

I was torn about the rating to give this hotel. I had seen some low ratings, & had written this hotel off. But, after searching all of the options, none seemed perfect, & then found out we had Hilton points, that we could use for 2 nights with an ocean front room. That fact, along with the photos, made our decision to take a chance. ||Overall, we ended up loving our room and view, as well as the hotel lobby & location. I would have given it 5 stars, except there were several major maintenance & service issues that took up our vacation time. ||After a day of exploring, we returned after dinner to shower, pack, & be ready for the next morning, so we could spend our final hours in our hotel enjoying the beautiful view of the ocean and boats that we used up all of our points for. This room costs over $600, with tax & the daily $82 resort & parking fee. We found the maids had not come, all towels were on the floor, so showers had to wait. I called down twice before they came up with the towels. We’d had our maid service sign on the door, & I had said hello to two of them who were cleaning the room next to ours when we left the room that morning, so they knew we were gone. Finally got our towels, & ready to shower, then find the shower does not turn on! Called the front desk again to see if there was some trick to it, and they said they’d send maintenance. After 45 min., I called a 2nd time, as our evening was wasting away, and we weren’t sure when they’d arrive. It turns out, the lever on the tub was calcified, and wouldn’t budge. It looked fine, but was frozen. The maintenance man broke the lever trying to maneuver it with his wrench, and had to go get another faucet to install, then found the shower head was leaking, & fixed that. Meanwhile, the one main light in the room was flickering on and off all evening. We asked if they could fix that. He said it might be the bulb – but it was not. They realized it was an electrical issue, which could be a fire hazard, but asked if they could come back tomorrow to fix it. We were checking out the next day, & needed some light in the room beyond the beds to do anything. They eventually moved things to a different electrical outlet to get by. They then knocked on the room next door, so they were in demand. Our room had blue tape along the vanity counter saying “Wet caulking” in Spanish, so they had been to our room before our arrival dealing with other issues. I don’t know how the maids & other guests had not reported the tub/shower before, it was so frozen. After hours of dealing with our non-maid service & maintenance fixes, we didn’t have time to re-pack our bags and prepare for the next morning as planned, which meant our last several hours in the morning were spent doing that, rather than enjoying our expensive view. At the price of these rooms, I feel the Hilton should compensate for not maintaining the rooms properly & wasting valuable vacation time. Of course, they likely have not noted the issues, as the check-out clerk never asked us how our stay was, as is the norm in all hotels. Likely knowing it’s a loaded question! ||A few other details: ||- Check-in clerk tried to tell us the garden/pool view rooms are just as nice as the ocean view we booked. Not true for us; & prices on the rooms prove it. Even the bellman affirmed this. ||- Check-in clerk told us to go outside to another bldg. to get to our room, in spite of a map showing it right above the lobby. The bellman told us the clerk must be new, & offered to take us to our room through the lobby, even though we did not yet have our luggage. He was right. ||- Check-out clerk made no eye contact, did not ask us how our stay was.||- Coffee shop in the lobby had a male & female worker talking behind the counter. They would not look up, nor acknowledge we were there, & would not stop their conversation…. When we finally interrupted them, they still seemed very reluctant to give any service. We ended up not bothering getting anything, they were so off-putting. Next morning, just the male worker was there. This time he was pleasant, made great drinks,... Their job is to serve customers. The initial day definitely mars the experience & convenience. ||- Toilets in the room are so low, you are in a free-fall. If you have any height to you, have bad knees, arthritis, or often need an ADA room with grab bars, you may have difficulty in the standard rooms.||- No fridge or microwave in the room. ||- 1 luggage rack. Bellman told us the hotel has no additional racks. Room that sleeps 4, but 1 luggage rack. A very small investment could improve this. | |- Front desk often does not answer the phone. When told to call down to tell them if we'd take our room, it took 3 calls to reach them. The Bellman waiting at our car even asked if it took so long to come down, because of trying to reach the front desk. Obviously, this wasn't the 1st time. ||The Bellmen are the stars here! They had accurate information & were very helpful. They truly deserve raises; they were the best workers in the hotel. While the maintenance men were friendly, I do not want to spend my vacation time with them. With the amount of issues in our room alone, the Hotel should be examining every room. If our faucets are calcified, others are too. It is not okay to do it on the customers’ dime.||While I loved our view (the amount of time we could look at it, beyond spending time tracking down maids & dealing with their maintenance crew), & the room was spacious and seemed clean and comfortable, it feels like there needs to be an overhaul in maintaining the facilities, ensuring properly trained staff, and not relying completely on the Bellmen to give customers an appropriate feeling of being informed, made comfortable, and just knowing the details about the room, hotel, & sights. ||Because I loved the location, view, and general feel of the room, I would try it again; but if I faced the same scenarios, it would be my last. If you are already booked here, you may have a spectacular stay; the potential is there, but there seems to be a need in better training, better staffing, updating the fixtures, and ensuring people answer phones and do their jobs. I am hoping my one visit was a fluke, and that most are just enjoying a wonderful vacation. I'd like to see this place flourish, and don't think it would take that much to do it. Either better management or an investment in the facility. For the rates being charged for the rooms, and the ridiculous daily $42 parking fee & daily $40 resort fee, the bar needs to be raised by the Hilton. The Hilton seems to be focused on saving on costs, rather than the...

I encourage every person who chooses to stay at this hotel to please read the reviews. I am writing a more detailed letter to Hilton Corporate as I am absolutely flabbergasted that despite the horribly consistent negative reviews regarding the staff, nothing has changed. You can flip back through many reviews and see the same. Basically, customers complain about incompetent, poor service/staff and someone from this hotel responds with how unfortunate it is that a guest didn’t have a great experience and to please contact them so they can make up for the bad experience. It’s all words and no action. Hilton is better than this and they need to start paying attention. Traveled using Hiltons or Marriotts for both business and pleasure for years, always with excellent experiences. Unfortunately, we trusted that Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort would be a great venue for our daughter’s wedding and while the venue is beautiful, the staff is subpar to say the least. Room Block?/Illegitimate charges: We worked with the Hilton events staff for months on a room block for our small wedding, which should have taken an email or two. Somehow the front desk had no knowledge of any room block arrangements. As a result, 6 guests had to wait on couches for three to six hours, even though two arrived a day early — they were forced to check out and check in to their 3 night “room block” reserved room, thereby putting much stress on many in our party to prepare for our welcome dinner. Then, they locked a couple of our guests out of their room, charged a no show fee for a guest who clearly arrived and stayed in the room intended, and then charged one guest who had already paid. There were charges on one guest’s credit card for which there was no explanation. Oh, and by the way, despite our room block efforts with the Events staff, there was no real room block—our guests were spread far and wide despite promises to keep us as close together as possible. Shuttle: When we booked our wedding, a shuttle service was advertised for guests for both airport and local transportation. This was a primary factor in choosing this location as it was a destination wedding. When the bride and groom visited in January they were told the shuttle would only be available for airport trips. They provided a site whereby guests could put in to reserve the shuttle; however, this method provided no openings on the shuttle. The truth is that the shuttle is basically for Southwest airline employees and if there is room for guests and the time is perfect, great; otherwise, good luck. We ended up renting a 15-passenger van that my husband used to shuttle our guests to and from the airport and other various activities of the weekend. We also paid an inordinate amount of money for a transportation company for two events. So a big THANK YOU to Hilton for falsely advertising a shuttle service. Food: In a word: Horrible. Instead of basking in the sunshine and enjoying the immediate week following the wedding, the bride and groom were hearing from their friends who had been inappropriately charged for a variety of things, some of which Hilton management could not even explain. The Director of Front Office, Kezai, sends a lot of emails with a lot of words and promises but then doesn’t follow through. Many of our guests were inconvenienced and stressed by the actions of front desk personnel (lock-outs, unauthorized charges) and he promised a random three one night certificates to stay at a Hilton of choice. Names were provided and yet here we are a month later, and he just can’t follow through. To sum up, the venue is beautiful. Some of the staff was pleasant , but helpless as they were not prepared for success. I will note that the housekeeping staff was very good. As a Hilton property, this location should have the best of the best hotel managers here. Unfortunately, this is not the case and as a result, Hilton loses— and in this particular situation, our experience would have been much enhanced had Hilton staffed this location with its...

We had a reservation for one night Sunday into Monday. I have the Hilton Honors app so I did digital check in and it told me I would get a notification when my room key was ready. On our drive down we had reached out to see if there was a chance of early check in since we were arriving early and were told they had been fully committed the night before so they couldn't say if anything was going to be available sooner, but to check in when we arrived.

We got to the hotel at around 10am and went to the desk to see how the parking situation worked since both gates to the property were open. He assured us we were fine to park anywhere and gave us some bike coupons to use while we waited. We came back around noon just to see if there was an estimate for when the room would be ready, and were told that they couldn't check the status of the room before it is available. He said he saw that I had opted for digital check in so I would get my key that way as soon as the room was ready.

We decided to explore while we waited, and I continued to check my app to see if the room was ready throughout the day. At 4:30pm we still didn't have any kind of notification so we decided to go back to the hotel since check in was at 4pm. When we got back the line to check in was past the front door and people looked frustrated. Took about 30/40 minutes to get to the front desk and we spoke to the same person we had talked to earlier. He said digital check in wasn't working all day, but they could check me in manually. This was frustrating because I had checked in twice during the day and no one mentioned that would be an issue or reached out to let us know when they realized it was a problem. If I knew I had to check in manually I would have come back earlier to try to avoid the crowd. Even as we were leaving the lobby the line to check in was just as long as when we arrived.

When we finally got the the room we realized the toilet was running and wouldn't flush. We immediately called the front desk to see if they could send someone to fix it and they said an engineer would come right away. After 45 minutes no one had come so we messed with the toilet until we got it to work. We didn't tell them we had gotten it fixed ourselves and still no one ever came to check on it. The wine glasses in the room were extremely dirty and dusty, but other than that everything else seemed clean. The room was pretty big and had a lot of floor space which was nice.

The property itself was pretty dated and the amenities weren't anything special, the pool seemed small for how big the resort is. There was also dirty dishes left in the hall from at least 5pm to 12pm the following day, even after we saw cleaning people coming through both days. On the positive side I will say the location is great. Close to the beach and downtown. The bike rental spot on the property was also convenient and it's nice that they give you vouchers to use for it.

Overall, I would say this experience was underwhelming and I don't think the value of this hotel matches the price. I likely wouldn't...