Having stayed at The Hilton Milton Keynes on two other occasions with friends, I was looking forward to staying there with my husband. We stayed on a Friday night in November as we were going to a concert at the nearby Stables theatre (an excellent venue).
Unfortunately the Hilton did not live up to our expectations on this occasion.
There were not enough staff at Reception, so we had to wait some time before checking in. There was no reply from Housekeeping when the lady at Reception phoned to ask if our room was ready, so she allocated us a different room. This meant that the free WiFi (as Hilton gold card holders) did not work with our name and room number combination; there was no complimentary water in the room; a newspaper arrived the following day even though we had said we didn’t want one; and our name and room number were not on the list for breakfast the next morning.
The room itself was okay, with a large comfortable bed and it was reasonably clean (apart from fluff in the drawers). The bathroom was not very good: the toilet was very difficult to flush properly; it was also difficult to turn the shower and cold tap off fully; the shower itself was old and not at all powerful; and the towels (which had labels from the Bank of England health club) had definitely seen better days.
We arrived at around 3.30pm and there were several trays of dirty plates (some from breakfast) all the way along the corridor to our room.
We had a drink in the bar before getting ready to go out for the evening. Again, there was only one member of staff, who told us there were no crisps available. We noticed that some of the bar snacks were served with crisps and there were packets at the bar later in the evening, so there were clearly some somewhere in the hotel. The bar area was reasonably comfortable, but a bit grubby, with biscuit crumbs, sugar wrappers, ketchup bottles and dirty cups lying around.
Breakfast the following morning was good (very nice hash browns and good scrambled eggs by hotel standards), but the staff were very slow to clear our used plates.
To be fair, the WiFi and complimentary water problems were resolved to our satisfaction and it didn’t seem to matter that we weren’t on the list for breakfast. Also, the few staff we did see were, as usual, friendly and polite. But we left with the definite impression that the hotel was short-staffed and couldn’t quite cope. We did get a very good rate by booking a long time in advance, and we would be willing to give the Hilton MK another chance to get things right next time.
This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC.
December 13, 2012
Dear Bluesprout61
Thank you for taking the time to write your review. I was sorry to hear we didn't live up to our usual expectations during your stay. We have carried out corrective action on the points mentioned in your review, in order to put things right for next time.
I'm delighted that you will come back and stay with us again. You will be sure of a very warm welcome.
Regards
Prasoon
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This response is the subjective opinion of the management representative and not of TripAdvisor LLC.