Amber McMenamy

Review of Sandestin Beach Hilton

Our first stay here last year was great! This year...

Our first stay here last year was great! This year has been a disaster! Our first night we awoke to an alarm at 6am and were told to evacuate. We went down 10 flights of stairs and waited outside for 2 hours before we decided to finally go back to our room. No one ever told us it was safe to go back in. No one ever offered anything to compensate for this. We ordered room service 3 times, 2 of these times it took double the time given to arrive. I had to call to see when we were actually going to receive our food. I called today to ask for a late checkout and was told no, and that it would be $75.00 to stay until 2pm, and HALF OF OUR $390 ROOM RATE TO STAY UNTIL 4PM! When I asked why it was ok for us to sit outside for 2 hours and never told when it was safe to return to our rooms, Patrick the manager had no explanation. When I asked why we had to wait and hour and a half for roomservice that was supposed to take 35-45 min, Patrick simply said that wasn't supposed to happen. The only thing Patrick attempted to do was remove a $29 roomservice charge for breakfast ordered for 1 person (when we have 5 staying here) on the day that we had to evacuate because complimentary breakfast was given that day anyway! We were never told this! The rest of our group never even received breakfast. In short I am being charged $75 to stay an extra 2 hours even though we spent 2 hours outside our very first morning here, then we saved $29 on breakfast for 1 when we all could have received $90 worth of complimentary breakfast had we been told anything about it. Absolutely horrible customer service, and zero respect for the customer here, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME STAYING HERE, THEY WILL NOT WASTE THEIR TIME ON YOU!

The general manager Gary Breilmeyer called after I requested to talk to him. Gary informed me that there were people posted to inform guests when it was safe to return to our rooms and that there was complimentary breakfast being offered in the buffet area for the several hundred people staying that night. Gary couldn't believe that we weren't told about any of this even though we were outside with at least 75 other people who were never approached by any staff during the entire ordeal. He offered to waive the $75 fee to late checkout, but was not very nice about this, at all. He did not apologize for any inconvenience, instead he told me repeatedly that no one else reported this problem. When I asked for the corporate number, Gary told me he did not have it, this is a private resort (even though it's a Hilton), I would have to look it up on the Hilton website and that this conversation was over.

In all our tips to Destin, we always encounter the best customer service, until now. This hotel and it's management have absolutely no respect for their guests. We had planned on coming back here for years to come, now, we will not be returning.