Hilton Garden Inn Gainesville

Clean. Smelled clean. Great accommodations!

Although the room was lovely, the restaurant was beyond disappointing. For our lite dinner, the menu was very cheaply printed on stapled paper. They had a jalapeño margarita listed but not only did our waiter/bartender not know of it, he had never seen it listed on their menu. They did not have the ingredients to make one. This morning, we had no idea the breakfast protocol. We found a person at the counter and she asked if we would be ordering from the menu or having the buffet. We ordered from the menu. It said that there were 2eggs, choice of meat, and potatoes. I ordered eggs over easy (they were terribly over cooked). No potatoes. I had to find the server and ask. “We are out of potatoes.” My husband’s 3 egg omelet (were the quail eggs??) was lacking much by way of a filling. The coffee was good, at least. It just seems to me that if you were the manager, you would want your printed papers looking professionally printed. You would expect your chef to send someone across the side street to Sam’s Club to buy a large bag of potatoes. You would also expect said chef to not send out a pathetic looking plate.
That aside, the people at the checkout/check in counter were professional and courteous. The hotel was well decorated and clean. I hope they can fix their issues, as we are avid Hilton customers.

Location

On the plus side, the room was clean and quiet, the beds were comfortable; and one server in the restaurant, Jacob, was very nice and customer focused. On the negative side, with only a couple of exceptions, the front desk and especially the food-area staff seemed very disinterested or distracted, some were looking at their phones or talking to each other when guests were waiting, and two out of three times we went down for breakfast, staff in the area, even though they saw us, did not come to our table to take our order or greet us -- we had to go up to them and ask to be served. Cooked food took almost 20 minutes to be served on two of the days, even though the restaurant was otherwise nearly empty, and one of our orders wasn't even close to what was ordered. The "buffet" was considerably less than one would get at a budget hotel, both in quantity and quality (see pictures). We were also dismayed to see a mom and her two young children who came down to eat leave the breakfast area with disappointment after being told that breakfast wasn't free, even though there was little left to eat at that point because the breakfast time was almost over. And while it's true that Hilton Garden Inn does normally charge for breakfast, the kind thing to do would have been to allow the mom and kids to eat something rather than watch them walk away to find something else while the food that was already out was being gathered up, much of it to be thrown away. Also, there was a plugged room toilet when we arrived and a defective light in our bathroom. Bottom line is that the hotel could be very nice and sleep quality was good, but something seems seriously lacking in hotel management and/or employee training. The "poor" rating is not to say that this is a bad hotel; it isn't. It was just below Hilton Garden Inn standards and typical experience.

Breakfast was great and so were the lady’s working with the breakfast

5 star for excellence in customer service. The hotel lost power due to an accident, front desk staff were so helpful with realistic estimates for power being restored and allowing for refunds if we chose to transfer to another hotel. I'll absolutely stay here again next time in Gainesville. Property was clean and conveniently located

Just odd… digitally checked in night before our two night stay- we did not receive notification that our room was ready - went to check in at 6 in the evening and was told that room was not ready but they gave us a similar room- I asked why the option was even given if the room was not available and he said “well I’m checking you in now”- weird weird vibe and we had to swipe our card which is also odd since we are longtime Diamond members and our credit card is on file-made us a little bit suspicious as to why we had to physically swipe our card, which is something we’ve never had to do at a Hilton property before!! no coffee in our room and the ice machine on our floor was broken-breakfast was a joke-last Hilton we stayed at made us a couple breakfast sandwiches to go even though they weren’t on the menu so we could use our food and beverage credit but the lady at this place said sorry that’s not on my menu!! Got two bagels for 7 bucks apiece and I asked her what I could get to use up my credit and she said nothing!! LOL!! overall staff, not friendly at all at this property-we definitely will not stay again

Location cleanliness

I booked our room via the Hilton Honors App. We arrived in our room and it looked very worn. The bedding needed to be updated. The HVAC unit cover fell off during the night. We were sitting in our room and someone walked right in!! The front clerk had given the room to someone else after checking us in to the room. Today I discovered we ere double charged for the room. I called the front desk and the clerk was not helpful at all. I called the customer service number and it was hard to understand the person that was trying to help me. I finally called my credit card company to dispute the charge. We will never stay at a Hilton Garden Inn again!!