Hilton Garden Inn Irvine East/Lake Forest - Hotel in Foothill Ranch - 27082 Towne Centre Dr, USA

I had a long trip and booked the Hilton Garden Inn Irvine East, Lake Forest for 17 nights, keeping in mind the comfortable experiences I’ve had with Hilton across the globe. But this one was a terrible experience. 1. The rooms were only cleaned every alternate day. When requested to clean it on a daily basis, it was denied. They even skipped my alternate day cleaning thrice in my 17 days stay. On getting in touch with the front desk (Daniel) he was extremely rude and said nothing could be done till the next morning as their housekeeping service is not 24x7. Even on the days it was cleaned, they would either miss replacing the towels, changing the sheets or cleaning the mats. Horrible housekeeping service. 2. My toilet was blogged twice in my 17 days stay. They took an hour to get a plumber the second time. Refused to change my room as well. 3. They do not provide a laundry service. They have an app with which you have to do your laundry yourself. But it requires a phone number registered in the US, to receive a one time password, without which you cannot start the washing machine/ laundry. I asked Daniel to help and he refused and was extremely rude. His exact words were “you either carry enough clothes or go get yourself a phone number registered in the US. I have alot of work to be done so please put the phone down!” 4. Breakfast is HORRIBLE. They had the same menu for 17 days! Scrambled eggs, sausages, potato and stale bread. The bagels had gone bad one of the days. On showing that to the staff, they chose just to clear off that one piece and did nothing else. I asked for ketchup one day at 9.30PM and was refused again by Daniel. Saying we do not have anyone in the kitchen. It was a bottle/ sachet of ketchup that he could have picked up for a guest. 5. I’d like to call out Sandy, Jake and Kylie. They were the only front desk/ restaurant duty folks that were nice. I do not recommend this hotel to anyone planning to stay in Lake Forest. Terrible experience overall.

I stayed in the property about 5 times this year. The service is not consistent. Last time I stayed for 4 nights and they didn’t clean my room. I asked the front desk to send house keeping to clean the room but it didn’t happen until my departure. This time I came early and I thought as a gold HHonors member they would give me a courtesy early check-in. The lady didn’t even try to see if she had any available rooms she just said come back after 4. She offered to keep my luggage which I wish I didn’t agree too. To avoid loading and unloading again I left my luggage and my dry cleaned suits and shirts to pick them up upon my return. The lady took my luggage and my dry cleaned items and threw my dry clean carelessly on a chair ruining the ironing of the shirts. Another episode of bad service. They are getting all the one stars because of the service.

Joanne (Asian) is the worst front desk employee to deal with. Firstly she did not speak clearly. She canceled our stay when someone else had booked it for us. We were literally staying there 2 nights ago and checking in at that time went super smooth. It was thanks to a tall African American guy that had a fro. I forgot his name but he was awesome. Joanne raised her voice and us and stormed off in the back and never came out. Other customers were waiting. Never staying here again.

Positive: Nothing Negative: I asked to check in an hour early but said we couldn?t. When we came back they had given our room with 2 queen beds away and we only had one king bed. The room was dingy and dirty floors. No hand soap or holder for the toilet paper.

Standard Hilton crash pad - nothing remarkable. Rooms was clean and functional. I thought hot water was a little slow but came along.||I guess I don't understand the HGI positioning. Breakfast is extra - next door at Hampton it's included. Rooms are the same. But on this trip, we were meeting for brunch and I didn't want breakfast so I chose the cheaper HGI. But, most of the time Hampton is cheaper.||HGI also has a "bar" - not a lively cool bar (at least Saturday nights) but just a sad little afterthought in the corner of the lobby - staffed I guess by the front desk employee. But, eh - Hamptons generally don't have a bar.||The other thing I noticed, bottle of water used to be included at HGI with Silver status - it was a brand standard. This was also a plus from Hampton. But I've also had Hamptons hand me water, so who knows. I was advised this HGI at least didn't provide water to Silvers. But, the front desk employee did the right thing and gave us a few bottles of water. That was the right response, why alienate a customer over a 20 cent bottle of water?

The previous reviews and comments from the GM stating that the other 1 star incidents were “isolated incidents” is not the case. The biggest problem is the lack of sanitation and consistent cleaning procedures. Despite having booked a room with a king bed, upon check in we received a room with two queen beds. When we entered the room, it was noticeably unclean. The sheets were obviously not cleaned between guests as the entire room and sheets reeked of cologne. There were stains all over the carpet. The pillow also emitted a very musky and unclean smell. Because the rooms scent was so unbearable, I thought running the air conditioning would help. However the sound that came from the broken air conditioner sounded like a train was in the room with me. When I went down to the lobby to ask if they could switch rooms, I felt snubbed. While I mentioned the original room switch up, I just wanted to be moved to a clean room. They ended up moving me to a different room, which was much cleaner and up to standard cleaning procedures. They also told me that check out was at 11am, but the website advertises noon. The delivered that “update” to me condescendingly. An apology in that moment would have sufficed, but all the employee did was avoid eye contact, put their head down, mumble questions, and hand me the new room key. Please don’t go stay here. The best they offer you is an apology through Google reviews, they can’t even look you in the eyes and have decent hospitality.

One of the worst Hilton hotels I’ve ever seen. The room is dirty, the couch is stained, the mirror is missing from the wall and, there is no soap in the bathroom. We called downstairs to ask for soap and “Matthew” (the employee at the front desk at 10:45 pm on 8/9/2024- if a Hilton employee cares to look up his real name), told my wife to use the pump soap attached to the bathroom wall. He said “we don’t have soap for the sinks anymore”. Haha. I know this isn’t the Four Seasons but you’ve gotta be kidding me! What a joke. Zero sense of hospitality. Oh, and we got a text message when we were on our way here asking if we needed anything so, my wife requested a couple extra pillows. They responded via text to say “they’d see what they could do”… they didn’t. Why ask if you’re not gonna try to really be of service?

We only stayed for one night so it suited the purpose of a place to sleep. But overall it was okay. A little mediocre and the rooms were average as far as cleanliness, comfort and “welcoming” kind of feels.