Great Location; Poor Front Desk; Great Concierge!
We recently visited NYC and stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn. We have stayed at many Hilton's and so this experience at check in was the most disappointing in our encounter with front desk. The agent at the desk literally tossed the envelope with the keys and our breakfast vouchers and barely nodded at us. Perhaps we were checking in early as we had an early flight into NYC and he was annoyed giving us a room , whatever his excuse/problem it was his unresponsiveness and lack of courtesy which gave us a bad impression. The room he gave us was on the 4th floor and we could hear the rumbling of the subways (at this point we figured the front desk agent was upset checking us in before noon and gave us this room on purpose so we just decided to keep the room). I remember asking the agent about the restaurant on site as I knew we had breakfast vouchers yet he barely nodded to say the restaurant was inside the hotel....obviously!....we were looking for some conversation from the fellow.....perhaps he could have told us that Pigalle's was the restaurant, times open/closes, etc.... Well I did not allow this service at the front desk of Hilton spoil our trip. We met Larry in the Concierge on two occasions and he was wonderful and cheerful and gave us information regarding the subway system, places to eat and info on the shows, etc. His service can be rated as 10 plus+++++++. (We did not let Larry know about our check in experience so we were pleasantly surprised at his level of service!) Larry certainly distracted us from the bad service at the front desk! It would be hard to recommend this Hilton Garden Inn, though it is centrally located well in mid-town yet we expected to receive attentive and good service from the very beginning at check in. Hilton "Garden Inn" obviously does not offer the same satisfactory check in experience as the other "Hilton" brand offers.