Bit of a stay report that may interest others. I'll have quite a few stays here, so paid far more attention than I usually do at Hotels!
Some background.
Revitalising the iconic 1970’s Hilton building and 1980’s interior into a new look was a near 3 year, A$200 million dollar undertaking. A disaster of a time frame financially of course.
The London-based Hilton group has said the combination of the $200 million purchase price it paid for the site about five years ago, and the $200 million fit-out, make the property its biggest single-site investment - ever.
And the renovation I am sure was the
LONGEST in any Hotel's history! It was closed totally for the duration. The penalty costs to the builders for the ~year over-run were rumored to exceed the GNP of Africa.
Personally I think they should have imploded the old girl entirely and started again from scratch. Right now they are stuck with all the silly tiny room windows in the original shell from 30 years back. In the case of our room, both bathrooms remain untouched, so you wonder where the $200m all went!
Booked a Junior Suite using the $A110 (inc tax) Diamond Club voucher. Bit of a hassle getting it confirmed as they did not believe such a deal existed, but I am
rather persuasive when I know I am correct.
Checked in about 11am (Saturday.) Check-in/Cashier area is way too small for such a place, (only 4 or 5 positions it looked like) and was very "cold" in appearance. Very "cold" on your body too - it is right opposite sliding doors from car drop-off/taxi area. When those open, a rush of frigid air like the Arctic roared in. No idea why, as it is kinda sheltered out there - but it did. Staffer agreed - she said it is a horrible position to work. They really need one of those circular panel 4 segment doors that many airports use for that reason.
We found the floor buttons on all lifts really weird. You can't readily see numbers on them at all, as number is colourless embossed in the circular metal buttons. They light up beautifully in blue when you select them though. Lynn thought she had it figgered after about 6 trips and that floor 32 was top left button, but each lift button panel is configured differently. Wacko system.
The suite was not ready, but they invited us to wait in Executive Lounge upstairs on floor 37, and they'd let us know when room was ready and do keys for us there. That went without a hitch. Folks up there went and made us coffees very happily.
Executive lounge is LARGE, and does have a lot of nooks and crannies. Seems to be open all day. 3 x free access working computers there - great idea for folks like us with no lap tops. Wish that was more common in USA and Europe.
Like the guest rooms, the windows in lounge are appalling. Just a hangover from the old building, but dumb they ever did that on the old girl. Little vertical slits of glass like archer positions in an old castle and yards of wall in between. 'Medieval archer window slits' I called them. The view from up there in the Lounge
should be great, but nowhere in there can you sit and experience it.
Same with rooms. We had 5 "archer slits" in the room. Crazy. Should have been near all glass expanses being a high floor.
Walked into room (3325) 30 minutes later. Highly disappointed. All the years of pre-hype about the "Six Star Flagship Hotel" had us expecting a
STUNNING and breathtaking new room, in line with what we encounter in flagship Hotels in USA and Asia. Nope.
It just looked boring and un-inspiring and dis-connected right from the moment you walked in.
Both bathrooms are exactly as they were 10 years agoI'd bet, or at last makeover. The myth that this hotel was completely gutted inside is just that -
a myth it seems. Floors had the original old heavily worn/scuffed marble tiles, ditto the wall tiles and wide basic top bench top and basins. Grouting on floor and walls was old and dark, as was sealant along all edges old and original.
Both toilets were old and a
very dated style. The tap-ware in main bathroom MAY have been new - but that was about it. Old style 1970s bath. They should have installed Jacuzzi types in this type of premium room - the space is certainly there.
Neither bathrooms had fans, or phones or input of audio from TV/radio. The latter I like if you need to visit the loo in middle of TV news or a movie etc. Every half decent hotel on earth has had in-bathroom phones for 20 years I'd guess. Toiletries were BVLGARI but very sparse - Lynn went looking for body lotion and there was none there. Even Best Westerns etc have that.
Room decor was like the staff uniforms - absurdly "modern" and totally out of place for a leading Hilton.
The Male staff have been issued these stoopid looking Space Cadet suits in a colour I'd call "gloomy green-grey".
They look like unwanted studio extras from a Star Trek movie.
Far more suited to a yuppy/hip targeted Starwood "W" type hotel - and not a leading Hilton.
Room furniture was a total mis-matched mess. A silly looking art nouveau and totally non-functional puke yellow Italian styled "chaise lounge" was rock hard. Huge square shaped lounge and matching chair were also hard and uncomfortable, and being a light cream type fabric will be ruined in 6 months I'd guess. You'd think hotels would learn about dark colours
one day. 
A strangely placed desk in centre of suite with a bizarrely modern black leather and chrome chair that swivelled back dangerously that was totally out of place. And matched nothing else.
Very large plasma type moveable TV screen, with separate DVD player both had a ton of really ugly wiring running from them. Really visually intrusive. Both
SHOULD have been professionally mounted on the wall above where they sat untidily, adding a classy and functional look to the gear. Rather than the present look that they had achieved, of being a hasty afterthought from some kind from an audio shop, and just dumped onto a cabinet top.
There were 3 music CD's there, (clever choice of titles I must say) and a couple of interesting looking movie DVD's. There was no note whatever on mini bar menu as to what these cost - pretty dumb, as I am sure now and again guests would buy them if they liked what they saw/heard and prices were sensible.
I probably would have bought Michael Buble if price was around usual retail. Ther ewas no mention of it, so I did not bother to ask. And I
bet a few honeymooners/1st time big hotel visitors will cheerfully souvenir the lot, along with their soap and toiletries and newspaper, and get a $200 charge on their credit card next day.
We decided to play a Michael Buble CD. It took us at least 30 minutes of wrestling with the quite misleading instruction sheet to figger out how to do that. There are 2 remotes and either was working the way we needed.
User sheet pointed to some little buttons on far right outer edge of TV screen to adjust. We hit one and the whole thing went dead. 15 minutes later we got it back with high volume you could hear 5 rooms away, we could not change.
We hit the "Magic Button" and asked if someone could come and show us how, and maybe bring a new remote as this one seemed to be defective. ("Magic Button" is their way of stopping you phoning departments separately - you use that one button for all enquiries - also strange for a major hotel.)
Cheery young kid arrived who was generally as confused as us. He had new batteries, had new remote, and nothing worked. He decided the only thing that worked was the tiny buttons at side that we could not see as TV was angled to wall with that site touching wall. A mad system. Another guest concurred.
All staff seemed exceptionally young for a leading Hotel. All those we encountered were friendly and keen to please, to their credit. Looking like reject Space Cadets wearing ill-fitting green sacks was not their fault.
The room has a little red/green light type deal outside the door you can turn on to indicate you are happy/not happy to be disturbed. However the 4 gang switch for that has no indication whatever about that. Or any info in room about it. As they have the standard door hang deals as well - "do not disturb" one system clearly seems redundant.
The 5 vertical 'Medieval archer window slits' are tiny as pointed out above. None open. We wondered why there were just flimsy see-thru curtains, as we wanted to sleep-in next morning. Then we noticed a kind of thick blind kind of deal built into the window frame. The top 12" of so on each was down. We tugged on one of these to pull it right down. Nothing happened. Odd. Tugged on all of them getting more frustrated on each one.
Hit the "Magic Button" again as asked how to lower the blinds. Cheery girl says there is a switch near bed marked "blinds". Huh? Went and played with that. Another 4 gang light switch type deal does in fact lower all blinds electrically. However it says "Press" on it, and nothing else - like "Blinds"! No note in room anywhere telling guests about this that we saw.
I tell "Miss Magic Button" I predict half their fancy blinds will be very soon torn and ripped and mangled out of frustration of guests trying to sleep, unless they place a little sign somewhere clearly visible in room. Cost of signs a few $1000 and cost of replacing with new blinds 100 times that. She seems to cheerfully agree.
Those blinds I must say were brilliant at keeping the light out next morning.
From 5.30-7.30pm the Executive Lounge serves booze and food, so we'd done most shopping by then and headed up.
VERY full, and it was tough to find 2 seats together. A lot of staff work there we noted, both earlier that day, and then. Ample drinks, and they had a nice Western Australian bubbly we liked. Friendly staff wandered around and topped them up several times. Service stops at 7.30pm with no advance warning - so hint - top up at 7.28pm.
They have quite a commendable spread of hot and cold food and sandwiches/snacks there - one of the better Hilton clubs you'll find in that regard.
At SYD Hilton I triple checked - there curiously is
only ONE restaurant in the entire place. It is "Glass" - more a separate trendy business than a Hilton restaurant. i.e. it has "Star" chef Luke Mangan and if he moved next month their business would halve I'd guess.
I am amazed Hilton do not have anything else as an option, as "Glass" is not terribly cheap, and clearly too formal/pricey for many guests need for casual Hotel dining I can bet. (Main courses typically $30's mark but the lowest priced domestic bubbly, which is all we drink, runs about $45-$50 a bottle, and we usually get through a couple of bottles, so dinner here for 2 would typically be $100s.)
Plus, you simply can't get a booking some nights as we discovered. I doubt there is any other large city Hilton anywhere in the world with only 1 eating option?
The Old Hilton had 3 places for meals - the San Francisco Grill was top of the tree, but the America's Cup Bar offered decent food, and there was a more formal place too in between the two - "The Market Place".
We checked at Marble Bar when having a drink and no sign of any food there. Only very basic Cafe Cano, the surprisingly small espresso bar at street level as you walk in doors, and a "GAB" bar upstairs serving Tapas and bar snacks etc.
We tried to book "Glass" for dinner last night - did not mention any certs - just asked to see if there was space at ANY time.
NIET.
We had the friendly concierge at the Executive Lounge ask them, and she really was getting the:
"Nope - 100% full" response, it was obvious that was the deal. For ANY time of evening. In fact she had a lounge guest ask for her booking to move from 7pm to 9pm in the same call. So she cheekily asked them:
"does that mean we can squeeze these 2 guests in at 7pm?" and also got a
NIET.
We had breakfast in "Glass" this morning. Even at 10.45am the place was jam-packed - amazing. It gets so full for breakfast on weekends they usually refuse admittance to non guests they told me!
Probably the most comprehensive buffet breakfast I've seen anywhere on earth, and that covers a few 100 top rated hotels by now.
It is an expensive buffet breakfast ($76 for 2) but eating late it is basically an early lunch. Weird thing is there is absolutely
no self serve coffee. You need to order it, and staff at an Italian machine pour it. As it was busy the girl there had about 50 orders and it took 15 minutes to get a coffee. Ridiculous. Having a few pots of self-serve brewed would help.
Asked politely if a later than usual check-out was fine, so we could do some more shopping, and they were happy to OK 2.30pm. We appreciated that.
The one thing Hilton really has going for it is
LOCATION. Right in the centre of all the retail CBD shopping in Sydney. I walked there from busy Town Hall station - only 100 yards away. The Queen Victoria Building with its 100s of shops is right across the road in George Street. The Pitt Street Mall and huge Myer and David Jones department stores are also only a minute walk away.
The famous
Marble Bar is still thankfully untouched. Originally built as part of the Tattersall's Hotel in 1893 it was faithfully re-installed when the Hilton was built on that site in 1975. We popped down to have a drink in this gracious old Victorian bar, and were pleasantly surprised to see bubbly was only $A6 a glass - pretty amazing for that kind of place. In the USA it would run twice that. A rock band with mega amplifiers then set-up and we vamoosed - a rather strange entertainment choice for that elegant kind of place.
In summary, the lobby and our room interior were VERY similar to a Sheraton Four Points Darling Harbour suite, where I have stayed a dozen times. However that place must be 20-25 years old now. And runs way under Hilton rates. And the 4 Points suites are superb with wide accessible balconies that look right over Darling Harbour with nothing between you. No Hilton window even opens.
This was not a room from a brand new "Six Star" Whizz Bang Hotel that was refurbished for $200 million.
It is EXACTLY the kind of room you will find at 100s of USA and Asian Hotels that are presently rated around
3-4 star. Most average Sheratons/Hyatt's/Hiltons equal or generally surpass this room's interior. We stay there again in a couple weeks and will be interested to see what we get then.
There is no feel whatever of "quality" or "discreet Class" to this Hotel. It is 20 un-connected styles and ideas all bolted together - badly. Everywhere.
Most great Hotels have an opulent feeling of taste and class and refinement oozing from them. From the lobby to the guest rooms. The public areas of the Waldorf Astoria are a joy to wander around. Ditto the Palace in San Francisco, or the Royal Hawaiian etc. They have "presence". The rooms are wonderful. The new Sydney Hilton has neither. IMHO.
We chatted to a very regular Hilton client in the lounge. He had stayed at the old place 100s of times it seems. This was his first stay and he agreed. "Cold" and "sterile" were words he used, and he agreed nowhere near as comfy a feel as the old place.
Staff were good and most helpful and cheerful as pointed out - and that goes a
long way. Silly omissions in the room like instructions and signs will occur eventually when the damage to blinds etc costs 100 times more than the room signs will! Yes it has only been open 6 weeks and these details will get ironed out I feel sure.
The totally mismatched and tacky room decor however will stay the same. It all looked like 6 artistic folks had input and none of it worked visually. Design by committee never works. No "flow" and certainly no symmetry whatever in the one room we stayed in. The stock standard (and well worn) USA hotel style 10 year old bathrooms was a real shock. And great disappointment.
Glen
ozstamps at ozemail.com.au
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