Long Beach Hilton - Business Comfort at a Price (Hotels in Los Angeles in general)

Member Name: Pinotage

Product:	Hotels in Los Angeles in general
Date:	10/01/01 (61 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Large Business Hilton

Disadvantages: Too far from Convention Center/Restaurants

If you're staying in The Long Beach Hilton you're almost certainly there on business, probably at nearby Long Beach Convention Center.

The pleasant part of Ocean Boulevard is a mile long dual carriageway edged with tall palms, office blocks and expensive hotels. Paralleling it in the distance, over acres of tarmac and convention parking lots you can see the shoreline with Queen Mary moored on the other side. Behind is a run down area of poor housing and liquor stores.

The Hilton, at the end of Interstate Highway 710, is four blocks from the Convention Center, which faces the restaurant area along Pine Avenue.

Rooms are good sized, fitted as you'd expect with small desk, ethernet connection, and phone. A TV with the least efficient remote control I've encountered sits in a cabinet on top of a mini bar. The lack of a master switch for the lights meant a nightly ritual of circulating the room turning off lamps. The bathroom has a coffee maker with mugs and a complementary pack of coffee. At least I think it was complementary for everything apart from the shampoo incurred an extra charge. The 50cl bottle of mineral water next to TV costs $4.50, local phone calls cost a flat $1 for the first hour, then 10c per extra minute. Store anything in the minibar fridge and you are billed a daily $25. Parking costs $8 daily. Even the morning newspaper left unasked for outside your room is charged for. And this on a room costing $125. To these prices are added service, city and state taxes.

Colleagues who stayed nearer the airport found rush hour traffic so heavy they were often late driving into Long Beach where parking costs about $10 a day. That?s why the hotels along Ocean Boulevard are fully booked.

Dinner at the Hilton was pricey but good, but the buffet breakfast is worth avoiding. The hot food was consistently cold. Scrambled eggs were a pale greyish yellow mound with the consistency of setting concrete and a
taste to match.

That is not to say I didn't enjoy staying at the Hilton. The bed was comfortable, the room quiet and I could see the sea through the tower blocks opposite. Hotel staff were polite, friendly and efficient. My employer paid for most nights I spent there and I enjoyed walking to work every morning in sunshine under palm trees when the alternative was scraping ice off my car before crawling round the M25. But the wide planted pavements took on a different aspect at night with strange characters lurking in shadows and I took to driving to restaurants, even though they were only a ten-minute walk away.

That?s why next time I'll try and stay in a hotel closer to Pine Avenue


Hilton Long Beach
Two World Trade Center,
Ocean Boulevard
Long Beach, California 90831-3102
Tel: + 1 562 983-3400,
Fax: +1 562 983-1200
Web: www.hilton.com/hotels/LGBLHHH/

Summary: