Homewood Suites by Hilton Raleigh/Crabtree Valley

Very nice lobby area/fireplace.

Location

Large room. Convenient location

Location and value for money.

Location is convenient and the staff is friendly.

Location to Crabtree Mall and Arena.

The breakfast was good. The young lady was so nice and professional.

This Homewood Suites was an uncharacteristically bad stay at a Hilton property for numerous reasons. I was there for 4 nights.

My first room had a few different issues. Around 10:00 pm I would start smelling heavy marijuana smoke in the room. The first night it lasted at least a couple of hours but I was too tired to track down the source. The second night it was worse and I could pinpoint it to coming from the bathroom vent fan. I ran the fan all night, which did help. But as soon as I stopped running the fan in the morning the smell came back immediately. There were two other more minor but still annoying problems. The main floor lamp in the sitting area had no on/off switch, so if I wanted to use it I had to move the sofa out from the wall to plug in or unplug the lamp. And the compressor in the refrigerator was on it's last legs, so anytime it kicked on it was really loud. Closing the door to the bedroom partially muffled the sound for sleeping, but trying to work at the table in the main room was tedious.

I spoke to someone at the front desk that second morning to let them know of the issues with the room and to request to move to another one. They said I could move rooms but couldn't assign the new room until after departures/house cleaning, so I packed up and left my suitcase at the front desk. To my surprise, about 5 hours later I got a call from the same staff member asking me if I had checked out early since my room was empty. I explained that I had not and recounted our exchange that morning. Eventually she did remember and confirmed that everything was ok. Of course when I got back to the hotel that evening, the person at the front desk was completely confused and told me there were no rooms for me at all because they were completely booked. After 15 or 20 minutes of checking, she was finally able to get me into a new room.

The second room only had minor problems. The door to the bathroom was not hung properly and would not stay closed. And the bathroom sink stopper had been broken off, not particularly pleasant for an old sink drain full of hair and other stuff.

Regarding the breakfast, I believe it was consistently the worst hotel breakfasts I've ever had. Very limited selection of hot food and no fruit. Twice there were these round pucks that sort of looked like a corn meal pancake. After asking I found out they were eggs. I tried one and I still couldn't believe it was an egg. They only had half-n-half (in the little pre-sealed packs) one of the four mornings. One morning they had orange juice, the other mornings it looked like iced tea. I didn't try so not sure what it was. Possibly the worst was that the tile floor in the serving room was so sticky and grimy that it was unpleasant to walk in there. It was almost as if soda had been spilled over the whole floor and just left to dry. It finally got cleaned on the last morning (Saturday). The Saturday morning breakfast was better stocked than the weekdays but the bar was low.

There was a full wifi blackout in the middle of the one of the days. I had went back to the hotel to take a meeting but eventually had to cancel the meeting because of no connectivity. The front desk said that there had been a power outage that morning and weren't sure when the wifi would be be back up, which is hard to believe.

And finally, the entire hotel was in need of updates, which they were in process of doing. So it's at least recognized that the general quality-level was shoddy and they are attempting to rectify. But just as an example, the main interior set of doors to the hotel had no trim around them, just bare 2x4's for the entire time I was there. Fitting for the kind of hotel experience that you are going to get here. I would never stay at this hotel again, even with the great location for what I needed to be in Raleigh for.

The biggest issue is my room had bed bugs in it. Bed bug on the bed, walls next to headboard, on the headboard and I got bit by a bed bug because a trail of blood was on my pillow where my head laid and saw it when I woke up. I took pictures. I showed the pictures and brought the bed bug in a tissue down to the front desk and showed her. She said she could not do anything but would forward the issue to the general manager. That was Sunday morning March 1. It’s Monday evening and there has been no call from anyone. I called and left a message for the general manager with Dawn. She said the general manager would call me. NO CALL FROM ANYONE. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE.
Furthermore, breakfast was not hot. Coffee was not hot. The worst Hilton property I have ever stayed at in all my years of travel. This issue is not over. STRONGLY RECOMMEND DO NOT STAY AT THIS HOTEL.

Plenty of room for my wheelchair and family. Nightshift desk associate, Darrion, was extremely friendly and helpful.

Everything

Break was good and bed was comfortable.