Serves it's purpose but nothing special (Hilton Bracknell)

Member Name: Little Miss

Product:	Hilton Bracknell
Date:	21/08/01 (770 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: location, swimming pool

Disadvantages: prices, room services

The room - I had a special corporate rate of 120 pounds a night, I honestly wouldn't pay more. The room was quite small but had everything I needed including hair dryer, ironing board and iron, kettle, team and coffee, double bed, TV with play station (charged at about 5 pounds an hour) and internet (10p per minute), your regular 5 TV channels and 3 german ones (no not that kind they looked like news channels), and a selection of pay movies, kindly listed on your bill as room service incase your on business and aren't supposed to expense films. They also have a deal where your spouse can stay for free, I don't have one so I don't know much about this.

It also had some things you don't need like a trouser press, if anyone knows how to use this device, please leave me a comment with instructions in it. The bathroom was also well equipped plenty of towels, and a note requesting to put them in the bath if you wanted them changing for clean ones or leave them anywhere else and they would just be hung back up for you. There was 2 boxes of tissues, not sure why but defintely useful, a shower cap, bath salts in a cool little packet, conditioning shampoo (girlies will still need to take conditioner I'm afraid) soap shower gel and bubble bath. So top score on the toiletries, although some moisturiser instead of several variations of soap would have been useful.

The major downside to my room was it was on the ground floor and had a window which had obviously been broken into at some point and which the cleaners insisted on opening and leaving open all day whilst I was out and my computer was in!

Room service menu - I normally admit I am the queen of junk food reason being it's convenient and suits my hectic lifestyle, however when stuck in a hotel for a week, when someone else is doing the cooking I normally expect to get fed pretty well. But not in this instance. The menu was spilt into sections, burger bar, pi
zzeria, cincinatti chicken, oriental..., basically there was a section for each type of junk food you'd eat on your way home from a night out. The first night I thought I'd try a freshly made pizza, freshly made at the McCain factory before being frozen and shipped off to the Hilton and the price for this was 8.25! Next night I tried chicken tikka masala, a slight improvement it was served in one of those stainless steal bowls however it had been tipped out of one of those plastic microwaveable containers I'm sure. It was served with rice and Naan bread and although better than the pizza was very stodgy. Next night I walk to the Sainsbury's across the street and bought a chicken wrap sandwich for under 2 pounds and it was delicious. In my week long stay I called room service 3 times on three seperate days. Each time the phone tranfered to reception as noone in the kitchen answered it and each time the Sweet of the day was apple pie.

Mini-bar - what minibar! I expected one but there was not, only a kettle with tea, coffee and shortbread biscuits which I admit were free but it was very sunny outside and I wanted a cold drink. After enquiring at reception I was told to refer back to the affore mentioned Room service menu. There was a list of about 8 drinks and then there was a note saying you could ask the bar for a more detailed list. Unbelieveable it was 2 pounds for a 500ml bottle of coke, I'm afraid I was off back over the road to Sainsbury's.

Breakfast - So far I've done nothing but complain about the food, well I can say they did manage a pretty good breakfast. They had a very good choice from bread and pastries, to ham and cheeses, to yoghurts, to cereal, to dried fruits, to freshish (some of them looked like they were out of cans) fruits, to you full fry up including a little man frying your eggs and making belgian waffles. Also for extra cost you could have kippers or some other kind of fishy breakfast.
You also had a choice between coffee (very weak and watery and no they wouldn't let me have an expresso from the coffee bar), tea and numerous fuit juices. You could also have breakfast served in your room, if you had breakfast in with your room it cost 5 pounds extra else it was about 12 pounds, or you could have breakfast to go, I didn't try this service but it seemed pretty good, at no extra cost if you already had breakfast included or for 5 pounds if you didn't you could get a drink and a bacon sandwich ready to go in a brown paper bag, you could either have it delivered to your room or pick it up from the coffee bar at a specified time.

Restaurant - There is a restaurant where you can eat on an evening but as I don't like to eat alone in restaurants, especially when they are full of men in suits I didn't try it out.

Gym - The gym was open 6.30am to 10pm through the week, I only visited late evening but found it very goos, it has an 18m pool, spa, steam room, sauna and weight room. I didn't use the weight room as I found it rather crammed with equipment and mainly men clients trying to out do each other with heavier weights. The pool on the other hand was almost empty and very relaxing. The gym also had complimentary towels and toiletries, the only thing I found annoying was that you needed a pound coin for the locker but the gym staff were very kind and lent me one.

Hilton Honours - When I knew I would be staying at the hilton I signed up for a Hilton Honours card on their website. They have lots of good ways of earning points, you can even double dip, this means if you have an airmiles card with their partner airlines you can also gain airmiles aswell as HH points. Even better if you flew with one of their partner airlines and show your boarding pass at checkin you get 250 extra HH points, actually no you don't I tried this, I got my airmiles but as for the HH points for the boarding pass the recep
tionist claimed he'd heard another customer mention this but he didn't know anything about it or how to credit me the points. Oh well I was happy enough getting HH points, airmiles and points from my credit card company for the stay (can you tell when I'm also a dooyoo addict?)

Alarm calls - When I checked in I was asked if I wanted an alarm call the next morning and a newspaper, I declined the newspaper but asked for a call at 7am. Next morning 6.55am the phone rings it's my alarm call and if I hit any button it will give me another call in 5 mins. Actually not true if you hit one of the speed dial buttons for hotel services it actually calls them, luckily I hit the room service button which they never answer anyway (see above). But anyway as a person who relies on the sleep button to make sure she doesn't fall back asleep I found this very useful. You could also set an alarm on the TV but there was no sleep function. On day two I decided to set my alarm call from my phone myself. You call it enter your room number and for security reasons (I guess so people in other rooms can't accidentally set an alarm call for the wrong room) it calls you back and then allows you to set the time. I set it for 7.30am, it goes off at 6.50am Grrr!! Next night I try again 7.30am, I set the Tv as a back up as I'm now not too trusting of the hotel alarm system, it goes off at 6.50am. I enquire at reception and find that they actually set up your first requested alarm call for your entire stay, luckily on day four it was reset to a reasonable hour.

Hotel bar/coffee bar - the bar had a pretty good selection and some very nice cocktails although rather pricey. But unfortunately the bar was kind of an extention to the reception seating area and also had to share it's seats with the coffee bar. The coffee bar was also rather expensive 2 pounds for an espresso! Anyway to me it ment there was no atmosphere and not really somewhe
re you could comfortably sit and have a few drinks.

Hotel Taxi's - there are usually taxi drivers waiting in reception or just outside, they charge fixed hotel rates or so I was told in such a way I was lead to believe they were cheaper than normal rates, however in reality they were twice the price of local taxi firms so I spent the rest of the week calling my own taxi's from a local firm.

In all this hotel was very average the staff were friendly enough the rooms were Ok but it was nothing special and certainly not worth the prices they charge. If your going for one or two nights it will meet your needs if your staying longer I'd look elsewhere.

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