We had a nightmare of an experience with our recent stay at the Hilton Waikoloa Village location in Big Island Hawaii. We went to Hawaii for our honeymoon and stayed at this property during the last 2 nights of our trip. We arrived at 4:30pm for our 4pm check in for a King bed Room, and were told they had “oversold” and they didn’t have our room. This was the first red flag. Having booked a month a half ago on Hilton Honors, how could the room not be available? The front desk manager Emely explained to us that she had worked in over 5 hotels and that this is just how hotels do business. They oversell to ensure they sell out. Even if this was true, it’s extremely unprofessional for a hilton hotel manager to tell the guests that they over sell on purpose and not having the room we booked was expected. As we were told all this, we checked online and saw they were still selling the same exact room that they told us were oversold and was unavailable. We were offered 50,000 points compensation for not having the room we booked and parking fees waived. But if it were you, would you take some credits and free parking to sleep on small separate beds on your honeymoon?
We thought the bad news were behind us, but this was far from the truth. We arrived at our building called Palace Tower, and the entire building is under Full Construction. I’m talking scaffolding everywhere, wooden boards boarding up the hallwaysm, dust and debries everywhere. There were loud drilling and hammering throughout the entire building. We were furious that this was not communicated to us at anytime during the booking process nor check-in process. We called the front desk but the manager ensured there was nothing they could do. As a result we called Guest Assistance line at Hilton. The representative that helped us was Alex. Alex was very understanding and helped us create a case for the poor conditions we were put in and said “Please give this case number to the front desk and they should be able to help you. If they do not help you, please give us a call back in a day or two and we will have more control over what we can do.” We did exactly that, the front desk manager still insisted that she could not help us in anyway so we waited to call Guest Assistance. During the entire stay, our throats were dry and scratchy from the construction fumes and we woke up with headaches each morning.
Fast forward 2 days, we called Guest Assistance things did not go as expected to say the least. We called a total of 5 times. The first person we spoke to was Mary. She completely threw Alex’s story out the window. She said there is nothing she could do to help us and transferred us back to the Hotel. I mean, if the hotel could help us, why are we calling corporate? The second person we spoke to, Zoe, straight up acted like she couldn’t hear us. It was very obvious that she was distracted or not even in a proper working environment. Every 10 seconds or so she would say “Hello? Hello?” but we could hear her clearly, and the person that transferred us to her, which was also on the line at the time, could hear us perfectly. The third call, a male representative picked up the call and insisted there was nothing he could do either and without telling us, transferred us to the hotel. We were devasted at this point but we kept going because we refused to believe that a big name like Hilton was offering this poor level of customer service.
Finally on our 5th call, we spoke with Kay. Kay listened to our story, tried to make things right, and gave the hotel a call on our behalf. He asked us several key questions and said he will escalate this issue to the next level in the Guest Assistance team. We are still waiting for responses from them as we are writing this. While we really appreciate him helping us with the situation, we are weary we might hear a completely different story next time we get in touch with them, much like our previous encounter with Alex and the other representatives.
We have spent countless hours during and after our honeymoon trying to resolve this issue and truly, we just want to raise awareness to this issue. We want to notify corporate that this property is actively and knowingly conducting deceptive business practices. They are overbooking on purpose to cover their bottom line, using bait and switch tactics to put guests in buildings under full construction without any notice, and exploiting guests in vulnerable positions.
At this point, Hilton upper management still has not reached out to resolve this issue. We will share this experience with as many as possible to warn them into further consideration when booking with Hilton and this property especially. We have also shared our experience on the r/Hilton reddit group and have received many warm messages regaridng our experience and will continue to do so. Please help us spread the word about this hotel to ensure others don’t fall for the same trap. Thank you.
