Hilton Homewood suites or Huntington Hilton

Anyone have any positive or negative experiences with either of these hotels for a room block?

Thanks!

I've had a wonderful experience with the Huntington Hilton so far. I signed my room block contract yesterday. The woman was very professional and nice. She gave us a tour of basically the entire hotel and the types of rooms we would be reserving. When I mentioned that the Melville Mariott was $20 cheaper, she matched the price!

We didn't have to put down anything. All they require is that you guarantee half the rooms in your room block (they can block as little as 10 rooms). All of the hotels I checked out had the same policy.

Don't do it!!! I blocked off about 30 rooms at the HH for my wedding last November, and it was an absolute disaster - it is the most poorly run hotel I have ever dealt with in my life.

While dealing with them they went through over 4 event coordinators (that I know of), and each one of them told me completely different things. I was lied to repeatedly - and it didn't seem to bother anyone. I guess when the turnover rate is so high it doesn't matter what you tell your clients. The most recent EC didn't even bother responding to any of my messages - I had to have my husband call up, and miraculously she responded to him immediately - every single time.

My in-laws and a number of guests also had problems with the HH upon their arrival - check-in problems, guaranteed rate issues, rooms were filthy - you name it. It was pretty embarassing considering that this is supposed to be one of the more upscale hotels on L.I.

And what really sealed the deal for me was that they couldn't even handle distrubuting our OOT boxes. They 'forgot' to give them to 3/4 of our guests - I had to speak to the people at the front desk three times before they finally sent out a voicemail to all the guests in my room block, telling them to pick up their boxes downstairs. Unfortunately not everyone noticed the blinking light on the phone, and 7 of my guests ended up missing the bus to my RH (the bus schedule was in the OOT boxes).

I ended up filing a formal complaint with the Hilton headquarters, but unfortunately that was a joke as well. Headquarters basically forwarded my complaint to the manager and events coordinator at the Huntington Hilton, and they ignored it.

Wow! Thanks for the warning - I think I'm going to investigate other hotels.

The Garden Inn can't do a brunch the next day

I didn't like the Melville Marriott - I think I may have to go out to Islandia now. The problem is that the catering hall is in Centerport and the church is in Amityville so I figured Route 110 was the halfway point.

Also, since so many relatives are coming in from far away, I didn't want them to be so far away from my mom's house (Amityville) because they will want to visit while we go off on our HM. Most of them will be staying longer than just the wedding night (there are people coming in from Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, as well as the usual places like FL).