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Currently doing a road trip through central California where the majority of stops are at Hiltons so thought would do some brief notes about each just for fun. If this is not for you then this is a thread to skip.
Intro notes:
1) For advice on touring central Cali itself there is already an excellent thread with good advice from loads of people at https://www.headforpoints.com/forums/topic/california-road-trip/ so I will try and avoid diverting into too much location advice.
2) When booking this trip I was relatively speaking HH points overloaded and cash poor, so although all of my stays are points redemptions I’m not suggesting they offer exceptional points value in all cases.
3) Similarly, the route was chosen for places we wanted to visit, not necessarily hotel excellence.
4) I’ll try not to moan every post about Hilton’s crappy $15 credit rather than free breakfast in the USA but suffice to say it sucks and hotel breakfasts are always overpriced while cheap and good breakfasts are easy to find almost everywhere; so there won’t be many breakfast comments as I’d rather spend $15 on a couple of free drinks and head out in the morning.First up Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront.
A couple of hours north of LA (if this is too big a hop then Oxnard also offers a beachfront Hilton). Absolutely its strongest feature by far is location. Situated across the road from the beach and a pretty 15 minute stroll to the centre of wonderful Santa Barbara – so basically location perfection. It’s a low density large footprint with only 3-storey low rise buildings and beautifully kept public areas and, particularly, grounds with scattered games (giant chess, quoits, croquet, tennis etc). It has a modest but very pleasant pool nicely sheltered by buildings (this is useful as the wind picks up in afternoons on this coast). It’s spread out, but if you’re in the building furthest from lobby/restaurant then you’re closest to the town centre and pier, so swings and roundabouts there.
Rooms are a mixed bag. Good bit is that base rooms are very large, every room comes with a patio or balcony. Bad news is that, although well maintained they are fairly clearly in the second half of their working lifespan so somewhat dated. Some footprint is totally wasted – the bathroom could easily be redesigned to fit a separate shower rather than just above the bath, and a large space left weirdly empty which could easily accommodate a chair set or even a dining table. If they were redesigned and refurbed with a healthy budget to use the footprint well with modern fittings this could catapult the resort from being just “nice” into being one of the best smaller resorts in the USA. As expected in USA upgrade for Gold was minor (supposedly from parking lot view to garden view, although we could actually see the sea so probably could have described it as ocean view).
The resort fee is $30 per day. This isn’t quite as bad as it sounds as (unlike ubiquitous Vegas and NY resort fees) it doesn’t only include things that should be standard. You also get 2 glasses of wine per day, free bike hire (there’s a great cycle path along the beach) and a few other genuine extras. What is less forgivable is the $30/day fee for self parking which is a flat-out gouge.
In terms of food options, Santa Barbara has an almost ridiculous array of high quality options at every price point for a huge variety of cooking styles. As such you’d have to be nuts to eat at a chain hotel restaurant with its predictable menu. We did, entirely due to jet lag fatigue so I can confirm it’s pleasant enough but pales in comparison to what else is available locally, although the ocean view in the dining room helps offset this. Similarly adequate is the coffee bar in the lobby.
Prices nudge $500 a night in busy periods and can climb to $800 or more on Saturdays as it is close enough to LA to be a weekend escape, so this is actually a very good value use of HH points at 80k per night, with 1p/point achievable. For me it’s easily worth 80k points but would be a stretch at $400 and well above for current rooms, particularly with resort fee and parking on top.
- This topic was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
The Kinney San Luis Opisbo
I love college towns with their vibe and their still-walkable downtowns, and SLO is one of the best. The Kinney tries VERY hard to tap into this vibe, not entirely successfully. It’s a Tapestry collection, whatever that is – I’m guessing it’s meant to be like Curio but younger/cooler. 15 minute walk to downtown so that’s great.
Rooms are standard midrange fare but well presented and tidy, and with lots of crazy (and actually quite cool) wall art and jokes about plagiarism on the pillows. It gets a bit more strange downstairs. The restaurant/bar goes full on student hangout with arcade games, skee ball, board games, quiz night etc, plenty of seating varieties and a bar menu of bar burgers and sandwiches (no deserts though). Not sure it’s working to bring people in, as the bar closes at 9pm every night (!!), which when I was there, meant just as the dive-bar atmosphere was livening up. No spirits either which seems very odd. Breakfast is served in the same area which is also quite strange; but is decent enough and reasonably priced so that $15 credit each will pretty much cover it.
Overall I’d use again for location but the attempt to be less cookie-cutter than Hampton or HIs, while very welcome, doesn’t work well enough currently that I’d pay a premium over standard level options.
Embassy Suites Monterey.
Obviously the preferred option on the peninsula is Pebble Beach resort, the pleasant B&Bs of Pacific Grove or even the IHG near the aquarium which is ropey but superbly located, but if you can’t quite stretch…
Embassy Suites has always felt like the awkward stepchild of the Hilton brand. It’s meant to be “upper upscale” whatever the hell that means. In reality it’s suites, mini-kitchenette and free breakfast for all will attract a family/group crowd; especially in locations like this.
This one’s ugly as sin on the outside but a mildly impressive 12 storey roofed atrium inside. Rooms are on the worn/tired side and the sofa bed is terrible. Can’t comment on the restaurant but there’s a great diner almost across the street. There are happy hour drinks in the evening but they’re pretty low quality; beer is Bud or Michelob. Breakfast is the basic expected hot and cold items, but turns into a zoo for the last hour so early risers will fare best.
The funniest bit is the small shop. With evening drink and breakfast already included, it’s an option to use the $15 daily credit, but the hotel has got that covered by the most ridiculous markups you’ve ever seen that make hotel minibars look like Poundland. A kitkat was $6.It’s just about acceptable for 60k Hilton points. A room can go for well over $400 on Fri/Sat (so I suppose points do offer technical value) – but there are many much better local options for cash.
Thanks TSS, really insightful/informative/useful reviews. Keep them coming!
Hilton Santa Cruz Scotts Valley
I really like this one actually. It’s well out of the madness of Santa Cruz and its famous boardwalk, up the valley on the highway to San Jose, and extremely convenient for Roaring Camp railroad. It’s set into the wooded hillside and far back enough that it feels like it’s in a far more isolated spot than it is – we got a mysteriously named ‘garden view room’ – there is no garden in view – but it’s actually on the border of a meadow and redwood forest so even better. Room extremely well furnished too and even produced decent coffee out of the coffee maker. Amusingly got loads of Emails about how we’d got an upgrade here, which seems to be to a “pure wellness” room which I can’t quite work out what it is. Seems to be a combination of thorough cleaning (shouldn’t you do that for all rooms?), hypoallergenic duvet (eh?) and som air filter thingy in the corner. If I were them I would have emphasised the upgraded view instead. There’s a pool that isn’t huge but again is in a really pretty spot.
It’s a smaller hotel at under 200 rooms and feels even smaller still. The hotel has a blank conference style dining room that may function for breakfast, but guests and staff wisely entirely ignored it for dinner – everything was served in the bar which is very homely and small enough to have a really nice atmosphere. Food was standard fare done well, but drinks were unexpectedly good with a really nice range of craft beers on draft from local small breweries. Server inexperienced (told us so) but tried really hard so a couple of minor errors easily forgiven.
At 60k points it bounces between $200-400 per night so will sometimes offer points value. It often gets booked out for weddings on summer weekends I think so Sat prices can go wild. If I were paying cash then a balcony upgrade only seems to add $10ish on average, and given the beautiful location, I’d take it – or maybe do some mild pre-arrival upgrade begging if on points.
Loving the write ups SS. I would do the same for you for the HGI Washington but I’ll just make it easy and say “don’t bother going”.
I chuckled at your breakfast comments. I hope this Type of breakfast credit doesn’t arrive at other parts of the world. It’s ridiculous.
Just checking – the resort fee is N/A when booking on points, right? I am just embarking on a USA points tour also (mix of IHG and Hilton) and am banking on not paying the Las vegas resorts world (Conrad) resort fee!
Just checking – the resort fee is N/A when booking on points, right? I am just embarking on a USA points tour also (mix of IHG and Hilton) and am banking on not paying the Las vegas resorts world (Conrad) resort fee!
Just double checked and no resort fee applied to Santa Barbara despite being informed we’d be charged one at checkin, so yes this does bear out in reality. Definitely a useful perk in Vegas, where I fear the $50/ night threshold may soon be breached (and then they’ll all follow).
Thanks! Reading with interest as I’ve always wanted to do a Cali road trip …
Hilton San Francisco Union Square
Terrible and it’s all my own fault.
Ive always loved San Francisco. I’ve stayed many times, but only ever at one hotel, the very modest but wonderfully characterful and welcoming Golden Gate Hotel ( see https://www.goldengatehotel.com ) with its warm family welcome. To be honest, the first stay was so good I’ve never even looked at anywhere else. Very sadly this closed during the pandemic and remains so, with no information on reopening times, if ever. I pray it does.
Hilton has left itself in something of a mess in San Francisco for a long time. They’ve been trying to get a Waldorf Astoria over the line (it’s absurd there isn’t one somewhere in the Bay Area) but various projects have collapsed or stalled over the last few years, leaving Hilton with a pretty uninspiring selection. I’ve been in their financial district property before and that’s pretty ugly and depressing. I hadn’t even planned to stay at Union Square, but had a forced move from Hilton due to closures at other properties and, distracted by a work crisis, I didn’t bother looking elsewhere.
The thing is I KNEW it was bordering Tenderloin, I KNEW about the worsening of the homeless problem, but, in a wave of extreme cheapness, convinced myself that it was only 4 blocks south of where I normally stay, so surely wouldn’t be too different, and even if it was, I decided this would be tolerable because a free room is a free room, right?
Turns out it’s not. Partly this is due to travel circumstances. Previous trips have left children behind, they’re here this time. That means that watching the mentally disturbed homeless hurl racial slurs at each other across the street, beg aggressively or just randomly walk along screaming, which, when travelling solo, would have qualified as entertaining street theatre, is now not nearly so welcome. SF always has had a homeless issue but they’re definitely far more numerous than pre COVID, and the increase in security measures around Union Square speaks to this, and to the fact that they’re not all entirely harmless – it’s almost impossible to emphasise how numerous they are. This is even more of an issue for this property because every single restaurant at the Union Square Hilton remains closed. The entirety of the catering options is the lobby bar and shop, so going out in the evening is unavoidable. Not sure why it’s so shutdown as it’s far from deserted – the lobby bar is rammed all afternoon and evening, so I’m sure at least one restaurant could be sustained.
Given this the room is barely worth mentioning, but for completeness, it’s well refurbished with a very smart bathroom and particularly comfortable beds plus a generous sofa and spectacular view – particularly if you’re towards the top of the 40 floors and facing East. No complaints at all there.
To be honest I was so depressed by the whole thing that I thought I’d fallen out of love with SF, and cut short the stay (meaning this series will hit an unexpected extra property in a couple of days). Then hanging off the side of a cable car as the traffic whizzed past all the way to the Embarcado and hitting the sights of the northern areas of SF, plus a meandering walk back with a leisurely dinner in sunny Washington Square in fantastic Little Italy then Chinatown and Nob Hill has reminded me of everything I love about this place.
So I suppose the conclusion here is: don’t be a cheapass idiot like me and don’t use Hilton in central San Francisco. Points are not always the answer – don’t sacrifice quality or correct location just so you can burn a points pile. As far as San Francisco goes, I don’t know if vagrants don’t like hills, but from Union Square and Tenderloin they disappear almost completely as you head north up Nob Hill, so stay towards the top (the iconic Fairmont springs to mind) or anywhere north of there and you’ll experience the best of this fabulous city.
- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
I remember staying at the Hilton Union Square many years ago at a business conference. The hotel was fine then if not remarkable for anything in particular, but was given firm advice to leave only by one entrance and not the ones right onto the Tenderloin. Now the seediness has spread right around and beyond.
Embassy Suites Napa.
Lipstick on a pig.
Anyone who has driven anywhere in the USA will be familiar with (and have stayed in plenty of)their standard motel setup. There’s one at basically every significant major route intersection. The setup is a 2-3 storey building around a courtyard with external balcony corridors leading to each room. They’re basic but do the job and there are tens of thousands of them all over the USA.
Well that’s exactly what we have at the Embassy Suites at Napa. The amusing thing is just how much effort has been put in to distract you from this and convince you it’s something more:
Landscaping to the max – check.
Ornate high vaulted reception hall with reception in its own tile-roofed pagoda and open fire – check.
Lifts with ornately engraved interior walls – check.
Courtyard with multiple fountains and a full sized replica water mill – check.
Live swan swimming in those fountains – check.
High level room decor with weird sculpted glass bedside light – check.
Everything clean and lovely – check,
Poshest coffee maker encountered so far – check.
Excellent soundproofing against the nearby freeway – check.
TV screen bigger than my local Odeon – check.
Evening restaurant – actually no idea on this one – this is Napa with all its amazing dining/drinking options – do you think I’m mad enough to eat dinner in a chain hotel???
Breakfast in separate atrium, very quiet and in a fake tropical setting (think low budget Mirage Vegas) – check (although they entirely destroy the illusion by using paper plates – WTF!).Of course this is Napa where normal life doesn’t apply and even the Hampton costs 70k points and cash prices in holiday periods can be almost anything. I booked this last minute with zero research and it’s certainly the opposite of Tenderloin so job done there. Free breakfast was nothing special but not to be sniffed at given local prices. It’s a pleasant 15 minute walk to the centre of Napa where you can of course have a fine old time. 80k points may even represent value against cash at various times. However it’s impossible to get past the fact that you are paying 80k points for a roadside motel even if it is the nicest variant you’re ever likely to see. Lots of lipstick but a pretty pig is still a pig.
- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
Really enjoying the report of your tour SS , are you a poor judge or the Hilton’s not too great in California?
Really enjoying the report of your tour SS , are you a poor judge or the Hilton’s not too great in California?
Hahaha. I probably give too negative an impression (i.e. I’m a moaner). We picked for route, not hotel quality. In every case the room has been cleaned well, and we have had a decent night’s sleep (after one sofa bed abandonment). Food has veered between good and average but has never been bad. Therefore the fundamentals have always been taken care of. Some of my comparisons (Pebble Beach!) are ridiculous. Some of the stuff requires a bit of pisstaking (replica water mill and swan in a motel) but I secretly love.
Family straw poll (they don’t know points costs) reveals that they would happily go back to every hotel except Union Square. It’s me that sees everything through the lens of my favourite regular redemption of Trafalgar St James at 70k points so if you’re around that cost you’d better be that good!
Thanks for the Embassy Suites Napa tip-off. I had a reservation there and another at the Marriott “Lodge at Sonoma” resort. I’ll hold my nose and pay the resort fee at the latter.
I’ve spent a lot of time at other Californian Hiltons – which ones do you have yet to come?
Thanks for the Embassy Suites Napa tip-off. I had a reservation there and another at the Marriott “Lodge at Sonoma” resort. I’ll hold my nose and pay the resort fee at the latter.
I’ve spent a lot of time at other Californian Hiltons – which ones do you have yet to come?
There will be an LA instalment.
Yeah, Sonoma Lodge looks a cut above – bet you don’t eat breakfast with a plastic knife and fork there. Napa did have an indoor pool we used in the morning (and had to ourselves) as it’s not quite warm enough for the outside one at the start of the day, but everything else swings toward Marriott.
Oceans Santa Monica LXR.
I’m not a fan of the following things. Los Angeles. Pretentious hotels that try too hard to justify a 4 figure room price. Overbearing service that won’t leave you alone. Ridiculously demanding American hotel guests. To be honest I expected all of these things at Oceana and to write a cynical snippy review as a result.
Actually on our stay it only featured one of those things (LA) and we loved it. Small boutique hotel right across from Santa Monica beach. Beautiful setting and far enough up the beach that Santa Monica’s widely reported homeless problem was all but invisible. Very pretty on outside and very high quality of fit out everywhere on the inside. Ignored parking(is valet only at $70 per night) as you can park literally across the road for free between 6pm and 10am. Upgraded pre checkin to a ‘coastal kitchen’ one bed suite. Was both very spacious and exceptionally well furnished throughout with a large walk-in shower, and only slightly too many coffee-table “style” books to make sure you notice.
The hotel encircles a small but lovely pool and sun deck with almost all rooms facing onto it. Pool is well heated so usable even when not that warm. Hotel so small that you get a community feel. Attentive staff on hand for drinks and food but relaxed service. There’s a small guest only restaurant that has full length views of the beach. Is for guests only so was quietish for dinner but mostly full for breakfast. Food to a very good standard for both. Option to dine on a deck next to pool also available. Clearly not going to be cheap, but we were very happy with both.
From a points perspective it’s 95,000 per night for a standard room so is clearly great value for a $1200ish room at roughly 1p/point (with the standard caveat that if you wouldn’t pay the cash price it’s not a true value, blah, blah). Issue is likely to be getting standard room availability (we were originally booked elsewhere and had to set a room tracking alert and snap this up when it became available) as it’s a large no. of suites with few base rooms, with the upside that an upgrade would seem very likely if you do get a redemption. No resort fee is very welcome and you get $50 per room credit here, which, even at the prices here, will cover a breakfast dish and coffee each if you are aiming for a fully covered points stay.
We booked as a luxury version of an airport hotel for one night only (only half an hr from LAX) but if coming back would definitely attempt a longer stay. That’s it for Cali Hiltons this time. Now having been on Club Suite on way out will have to slum it in Club World for return. As my much business-travelled (in various cabins due to various travel policies) brother always says – never forget the worst business class is still far better than any economy, so always be grateful you can book yourself up the front!
Thank you for an enjoyable and informative mini- series.
- This reply was modified 55 years, 4 months ago by .
Really enjoyed this thread. Thank you TSS.
Quality thread, thanks TSS.
We’re due to stay ourselves at the Oceana at end of June (like you, a 95k redemption), and I was wondering if there were better ie cheaper points alternatives but having read your review I’m sticking with it. It sounds great.Great effort @The Savage Squirrel – Informative and enjoyable write-ups 🙂 We’re doing the Pacific Coast Highway in November (off the back of a Virgin UC redemption) so will definitely be using your tips 👍 Hope you guys had a fantastic holiday!
Awesome read, thanks. We have a 25 day California / Nevada road trip in August burning IHG, Hilton & Radisson points. This has put me right in the mood!
Awesome read, thanks. We have a 25 day California / Nevada road trip in August burning IHG, Hilton & Radisson points. This has put me right in the mood!
Awesome; wish I could do a month – always too much to do and see and the East side of Sierra Nevada and Death Valley area are some of my favourites that didn’t do this time. You may be aware already, but Radissons in California are generally very rundown and a very different brand level and target market to Europe (the one near Monterey has basically morphed into lodging for agricultural workers and social housing, for example) so I’d avoid using them with maybe the exception of TI in Vegas (a “value” property on the Strip these days but for me very well located and still acceptable quality so a good option when luxury not required).
Yes, I did read up on Radisson and understood the same – thanks. We only have 2 nights in a Radisson and have gone for the Country Inn & Suites at Vallejo Napa Valley. Reviews seem decent.
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