Hilton Garden Inn Washington DC/U.S. Capitol — Hotel in Washington

Edit: Gastro should always be treated seriously which the Hilton hotel failed to do and the customer service also failed to do when I escalated. Just to help people realize, my child ended up hospitalized twice and underwent 2 operations due to picking up gastro on this holiday. Our medical bills are in triple digits! Shame on you Hilton for not caring and failing to follow safety protocols. This could have also been fatal and had it been an elderly or unwell person the outcome would have been very different. Hilton has failed its Duty of Care and shown that it does not care.

If you were at this hotel between 8/4-8/7 - my child had a severe gastrointestinal bug throughout our stay here. He was very ill. The hotel were difficult and didn’t want to help me with cleaning supplies despite being aware there was a mess. They showed zero interest in how I cleaned the contaminated waste or how I would dispose. No gloves offered, when asked they were not brought until the third request I made to the hideous Acting GM. There was no regard for guests on our floor nor within the hotel during our stay. Had I not cared about containing the risk, this could have spread to other guests through the hotel. It took 14 days for my child to get back to 80% and then the bacterial infection caused other complications needing ER and multiple procedures, tests and monitoring. This was one crazy nasty bug that you would wish on your enemy. This hotel needs to take reports of gastro more seriously as the staff from front desk, cleaning and the GM all showed that they lacked the skills. I hope they did a sterile clean on our room when we left but I’m not hopeful based on how the management (acting GM and GM) at this hotel have responded or like the GM who stayed silent throughout. No integrity whatsoever! And that was a quick move on your behalf to shutdown the complaint so that compensation was limited to your paltry amount of points. I’ve also since learnt that protocol requires Hilton hotels to not provide guests with cleaning supplies, not to allow guests to clean after a contamination and that the Hilton must move guests out of a contaminated room. This did not happen. They failed me and were rude during the process (especially the initial front desk woman who berated my husband when we told her we used the small supply of wipes she gave us and needed more supplies to at least clean our first mess). Staff and the senior Hilton complaints management (who were useless and stonewalled us) need to learn empathy and act more professionally. I don’t know what the front desk woman thought we could have done on our own knowing we were in a mess and stressed about our ill child. She didn’t care for guests in trouble….and she needs to find a more suitable job away from people. fair compensation was made difficult and then blamed on the hotel GM for closing the case. Hilton complaints and the GM made this very difficult on purpose and their incompetence caused follow ups from me, repetetion, and so much wasted time. So many calls and emails. Absolutely dismal response to a safety issue. Hotel offered 20k points initially which is quite pathetic given the breaches and appalling service. Do better management at Garden Inn, I hope you can learn from this and also take responsibility for your failures.

Observations A/C - noisy and positioning of vent meant the air flowed directly at bed which was uncomfortable

Edit: the GM ignored all my emails and closed down the complaint so that the Honors customer service team were unable to work on this complaint further. There was no accountability for the misconduct and lack of care by Hilton and this particular GM and his unskilled team. My child had surgery due to the spread of the gastrointestinal bacteria…thankfully my child bounced back after many months but had he been unhealthy, ill or elderly there was the high risk of not surviving. Hilton just added to our stress and placed our family, staff and guests at unnecessary risk. Complaints process is...

This is, by far, one of the worst stays I've ever had.

My family and I arrived at the hotel with skepticism as the photos we saw beforehand looked pretty nice but when we arrived the entire lobby was quite disgusting. Clearly hadn't been mopped/swept/counters wiped down/windows or doors cleaned/etc. Not the biggest deal. The employees at the counter must have been absolutely new trainees as only one of them was attempting to help a line of people while the other stood there just hanging out, sometimes giving tips to the one helping. I figured it must be a training day, okay, no problem, I get it.

Then the issues started. We go to our rooms(upper floor through the horribly slow and dirty elevator), and one of them was quite clean and normal temperature. The other one...was about 86 degrees inside. Much too hot for us to be comfortable to be in, much less sleep in. I checked the wall thermostat and it says it's blowing 65 degree air...but the air that is being blown out is terrible, terrible hot air. We went to go get dinner and on our way out we mentioned to the front desk the issue. They said they will have someone look at it right away.

That was a lie or pure incompetence. No one came up to fix anything, and the room was just as hot or hotter than when we left. Since they did not answer the desk phone, I went all the way back to the desk to ask them about it. They said someone went but didn't get it fixed. Okay...what am I supposed to do now? Their solution was to put us into a different room for the night and then switch us back the following night after the issue had been fixed. They only had a king bed room available and we needed tow queens the following night. Sure, why not?

So we move to the new room...which was ALSO too hot but only about 72 degrees with no cool air available. Exhausted from travel and out of patience, I decided we'll just deal with it for that night. We try to go to bed. Around 11:45 P.M. I hear a scratching noise or something at my door. Tired, I hobbled over and look through the peep hole to see a full family trying to get into the room. I told them it was occupied and they were very confused and apologized but this was the room they were given.

The room phone rang, someone at the front desk who didn't introduce themselves or explain anything rudely asked "Did you just check in?" I said no, that was hours ago and I was moved to this room by someone. Before I could finished explaining he said "K thanks" and hung up. Few minutes later he calls again and asks if my name was something other than what it is. I said no, and explained what happened. He said no one left any notes about it under that room so they booked it to someone else. So hopefully that family had a room for the night.

The next morning I explained what had happened the previous night and one of the girls at the counter responds with "Man that, sucks." Like HELLO? Can you ensure you aren't going to give my room away or something because we're going to be gone all day? She kind of rolled her eyes and said "I can't leave notes in the reservation right now but I will later." When she's just standing there doing nothing else.

Coming back to the hotel later that afternoon, my room key did not work suddenly. Very confused, I went to the desk to ask about it. They asked if my name was something that it isn't(likely the previously mentioned family) and I said no, and explained, again, everything that had happened up until that point. She said no one left any notes about it(again) and that it isn't my room. Luckily, one of the previous employees SORT OF knew who we were at this point so we could get new keys and hadn't given the room to anyone else.

Beyond all of that frustration, the staff was horribly rude and dismissive of every and all issues(that they created) during our stay there and the general manager was nowhere to be found to help during the ENTIRE FOUR DAYS WE WERE THERE. Absolute horrendous stay. Beware or stay at a...

This hotel is not good. The rooms were nasty. The sheets on the bed were clean, but we could see the corners of the mattress peaking out underneath, and there were stains on it. The carpet looked gross, and I think is making the room smell musty. There were plenty of plug in sockets, but not one of them worked. The phone and clock were plugged in but not working. I needed towels and conditioner because, for some reason the shower had shampoo, body wash, and lotion? But I had to run down to the desk for everything since the phone was broken.

I had to reach behind the TV to plug in my laptop to get some work done. The furniture is too heavy so I was crawling over it and it was absolutely disgusting where the plug was. My husband had to go on an adventure under the bed to find a socket that worked for his cpap machine.

The hotel has stupid policies that they don't tell you about till it's too late. They don't service rooms on Sunday but only told us when we put a "do not disturb" sign on our door on Saturday. This was intentional as we thought we would have it serviced on Sunday. We were gone from 6 am to 11 pm so by the time we got back and saw the note on the door explaining this, it was too late. By the way, they have a sign in the room about hotel amenities, this is not listed on there.

The restaurant is a joke. I went for lunch and the server was great but the food was horrible. I got a crabcake lunch which was mostly shells rather than crabmeat. The server explained to me how breakfast works. But when I went the next morning for breakfast the morning server had no idea what I was talking about.

Breakfast is a greedy $21+ for a less than basic breakfast buffet. There's food to order that might be worth its price since it's cheaper than the crappy buffet. We ordered from the menu, our server brought just the food. No water, condiments, nothing. When I asked about it she said we're supposed to pick it up ourselves from the breakfast buffet. So what is it, table service or buffet? Pick one, this setup is bizzare. (Just know our server was very kind as well as all of the other hotel staff. Good people, dumb policies that they have to enforce.)

Also the people who stay here don't know how to act. Some people stank so bad we held our breath in the elevator. Other people were super loud, screaming in the hallways and restaurant.

And you can hear every little cough and sneeze from your neighbors. Paper thin walls. Our neighbor had a kids birthday party in the room for some reason. Couldn't even ask the desk to call them and have them quiet down because the phone didn't work and I wasn't about to get dressed and run down for that.

I told the front desk that our stay was pretty horrible and would like to be compensated for something, anything. The desk staff told me the manager would call us and take care of it....