OK - I can understand the hot and cold reviews of this hotel.

I stayed during the week of 11/12/07 and from my observation and speaking to the staff - this hotel is being renovated. As with most hotel renovations they do them a few floors at a time - usually starting at the top with the premium floors/rooms and working down.

I booked and got a renovated one bed suite on the "exec-level" - which are the upper floors. Hilton clearly sells the rooms on these floors on their web site for about 15-25$ more per night (no idea if it is as easy to buy this room type on Orbitz etc). In addition to being nicer rooms than on the lower floors you get a free breakfast in their small but nice lounge. It is only eggs, coffee, bagels and fruit - but was adequate.

My room was genuinely nice and clearly just redone. The decor was more up to date than I expected (flat panel TV, modern couch etc). It was also a true one-bed apartment with a separate kitchen and sleeping area. I can imagine some of the older rooms on this property are likely not that nice.

If traveling in the Galleria area again for business and in search of Hilton Honors points :-) I would stay at this hotel again. BUT I would pony up the extra $20 bucks to stay on the exec level to avoid getting a unrenovated room and make sure I got the included breakfast. If you are searching for value - you may want to try something else until they get all the rooms renovated.

Lots of small fairly minor problems I was prepared to ignore, but an overflow of sewage from another room into our bath outlet, coupled with a non-caring management team made this an incredibly scary hotel to stay in.

I stayed here with 4 business colleagues for 10 nights while attending a confernence in Houston. If the hotel, service, decor, food ANYTHING at all had remotely lived up to the photographs on the official website, it would have been an ok location for a shopping trip, but still too far away from the convention centre for the daily commute.....
We booked a 2 bedroom non smoking suite for our stay, 2 months in advance, and booked by telephone having verified the room was available, correct for our needs etc. $249 a night was ok for the size required.
However, on check in the room was very disappointing, having been described as 'upscale' and from the lovely photos on the website we expected a nice comfortable stay. it was in fact very outdated, dilapidated and stale smelling. Nothing was particularly clean. The kitchen crockery was faintly greasy, there was small amounts of mildewy gunk inside the fridge. There was nothing to clean the kitchen with, no teatowels, and only the very basic cups saucers but not really any proper cooking equipment. No ice machines on the floors ( the ice had been removed as a health and safety precaution!!!)
The jacuzzi was luke warm and dirty. There were building works in the hotel 7 days a week of constant loud banging so for 2 days we were trying to do business in teh room we nearly went mad with the noise. We were not warned about the building works prior to check in or at booking, it was not obvious anywhere at the booking process or on the website.

The front desk staff were nonpersonal in a totally disinterested way, and the breakfast wait staff were incredibly jaded and took 20 mins to serve coffee in an almost empty restaurant....
Housekeeping were pretty rubbish - we had a cigar from a previous guest left in the living room, chewing gum from a previous guest stuck to the bathroom wall for 4 days, and they made the beds right over the top of books, socks etc in the middle of the beds!!!

anyhow on day 4 after returning from a day at the confernece and a night out, we went to draw a bath to discover the bath was already half full of dark brown liquid with bits floating in it. We had been complaining about the smell in the room for several days, adn had noticed pale brown liquid in the bottom of the bath but I had assumed that the water was just a funny colour (like it often is in different countries)...
We realised it was sewage when a flushing toilet made more 'water' trickle out through the bath outlet holes into the bath. We called the front desk - 40+ rings and no answer. Attempt #2 the front desk hung up on us. Attempt #3 they hung up. Attempt #4 they said they would send an engineer but were not at all alarmed. We requested a manager to be present prior to the engineer. They said there was no manager on duty (!) but a duty manager can come... Over an hour later ( it's now after midnight and nobodys getting any sleep) 2 men finally appear and are laughing and joking and pulling silly faces about the smell etc...They try and pretend that it is the dishwasher emptying into the bath, but have not carried out any investigative tests. They tell us not to worry - it is building work going on in the hotel which has caused this - however - there is no substance to back up this and they are just trying to shut us up. We tell them we are not staying in the room and will need to be moved- it takes an offduty manager who happens to pop in to check on the hotel another 2 hours and lots of unpleaseant discussions to get us moved to a different room. She is the first person to say 'sorry' after we tell her that nobody is taking this seriously and has not even apologised. This next room is much smaller than the one we had booked, and also very dirty and a smoking room which smells very unpleasant as it also smells of excessive stale sweat. Plus the dishwasher door is broken and hanging off. We ask to be moved to a non-smoking room this is difficult for them but finally after 2am we are relocated in 2 different rooms on different floors. THe bath in this room too has dried powdery brown deposits on the bottom of it. We are too exhauseted at this stage to do anything else.
The electrical sockets in all the rooms were dangerous, exposed wires and piles of wires all over the place, holes in the faceplate surround etc......
At checkout we realised we had been charged for the 2 rooms separately - we were told that we had received an upgrade by being put in 2 different rooms - however the rooms were smaller and not what we had booked - and the manager that agreed to give us 2 complimentary nights to allow for the sewage ( to stop us from calling the Sanitation Dept) then only gave 2 nights at half price. It took a lot of discussions even after we left the hotel just to get the agreed 2 nights compensation. I cannot understand how a serious public safety issue like this was not dealt with - the hotel should be closed down. The front desk staff tried to blame the guest on the floor above saying that they had blocked the drains with their 'funny foreign food' - so the staff at this hotel are racist as well as incompetent. Then they told me that having sewage in your bath is no big deal ie it happens all the time in houses (!!!!) I don't think so! Not in my house! I wish I had called in the Sanitation Dept - the only reason we didn't was that we were working a conference and so spent very little time in the room, and all other hotel options were booked out so there was nowhere to move to. THe most disgusting hotel i have ever stayed in, staffed with the most apathetic incompetent staff I've met in a loing time.
On the plus side - the bell boy team were awesome, really good at their jobs, knowledgeable, friendly, helpful, and the beds at the doubletree are very comfortable.

I was very impressed with this hotel. Despite the hotel's age, the building is well maintained, elegant, and rooms offer good views of the Galleria area. As mentioned previously, the rooms are very spacious, comfortable, and the "Sweet Dreams" beds are amazingly comfortable! The rooms will be the best of the best once they are all renovated. I was very impressed with staff which was very friendly and proffesional, even though I arrived early the friendly front desk agent put a rush on my room and we were in shortly afterwards. I was pleased to find that this is one of the few hotels that still has a doorman at the entrance, a nice little touch that makes you feel more welcome and gives the hotel a proffesional and hospitable image. Housekeeping is excellent and consistent, they even neatly arrange your personal toilettries. The hotel restaurant is very small but elegant and serves a great breakfast buffet with a chef omelet station, lunch was also very good. There are also endless dining options and shopping just a walk away at the Galleria mall. Once all the rooms are fully renovated this hotel will without a doubt be 5 stars on TripAdvisor!

We booked this hotel through its website and needed 2 separate bedrooms. We obtained a fair price for the suite, which was the best in the Houston Galleria area. When we arrived, however, Hitlon staff stated that a 2 bedroom wasn't actually what we received; there is a symantic hotels use which are different. Therefore, we were charged $50/night more and they refused to adjust our billing.

The room was just so-so; old furniture and it needs updating. The bed, however, was comfortable. It is close to the Galleria, but from now on we will stay somewhere else.

Self parking is $11.00 per day + tax. Valet is $20.00 + tax.