Review Junior Suite Vienna Park Hilton

This review is part of our journey on the road which took us in early July from Italy to Latvia. For all of our stops, we chose to stay in Hilton chain hotels as part of the strategy for achieving level Diamond in the Hilton Honors loyalty program.

 Reservation

Having a 7-year-old daughter, it is now impossible to sleep all in the same bed, although the king-size Hilton is big enough. Therefore I had booked a room with an extra bed. The cost in HH points started at 41k per night. while the cash cost was 171€. In any case I prefer to accumulate points and then spend them when I can get a better conversion especially by taking advantage of the fifth free night.

It is good to always remember that if you want to get all the benefits provided by the status, you have to book through app or official website and not through portals such as booking or similar.

Check-in

In a hotel of this size and category, even in this period of slow restart, finding in the 8 reception desks a single attendant is quite annoying. Especially if, as in my case, a guest asks for an explanation of a charge in the bill and you are forced to wait in line 20 minutes.

I had not been able to check in via the app, much less choose a room, and when my turn came I realized why. For some reason my reservation did not exist, a problem solved after a few minutes of embarrassment. To make it up to you, we received a triple upgrade to a panoramic junior suite, a really spacious, bright room even though there wasn't much panoramic from the windows.

The room

As mentioned, we received a room upgrade (the same room would have cost about €60 more than the one we booked), all thanks to the Gold status that is one of the benefits included in my American Express Platinum share.

This is a true Junior Suite, in fact it could almost be a small suite since it has two rooms separate from the bedroom.

The first is a true living area with sofa, coffee table and big screen TV, as well as the inevitable coffee maker and mini-bar.

No water in the room, normally two bottles are complimentary for all elite guests, in this case in Vienna they are so proud of the quality of their tap water that there are beautiful crystal pitchers and glasses in the room and it is explained to guests why "mayor's" water in Vienna is better than bottled water.

The bedroom comes with a king-size mattress and a very good topper, it has a glass window on two sides, and the light, the lots of light coming into the room, makes it less suffocating that the ceiling is really lower than average.

Behind the headboard of the bed is a semi-enclosed wall that divides the smart working area, equipped with a comfortable office chair, coffee table and B&O Bluetooth speaker.

The bathroom is also large in size and furnished in the classic style of the more modern Hilton. A small curiosity, I find the current line of products to be of much higher quality than the previous one, particularly here it is the first time I have seen family-size packages as opposed to the classic disposable ones.

The structure

The hotel is huge, on the ground floor it houses a bar with an adjoining pastry shop and plenty of seating both in the actual bar area (for the European it was also transformed into a fan arena) and in the area in front of the reception. Thanks to the partial glass roof, the whole area was flooded with very warm and welcoming natural light.

Unfortunately, the lounge was closed, again due to Covid, but to make up for the inability to use the lounge, some of the seating in the bar area was reserved for guests with lounge access. A full-fledged gymnasium is available in the hotel, which is also accessible to outsiders. On the one hand this ensures better quality, on the other hand it is obviously a more dispersive environment than the classic fitness room where only hotel guests have access.

Bicycles are also available to guests.

But the unique service offered by this hotel is the ability to book a room with a fully equipped mini-gym inside. These rooms are called Five feet to fitness: they cost similar to that of a Junior Suite and offer equipment that allows the guest to work out in the room without even having to take the elevator to the gym. This is the first Hilton in Europe to offer this service to its guests.

Again maximum attention to health protocol, the elevator for example is automatic: you swipe your card (or cell phone) near the reader, automatically the system indicates which elevator to take and pre-assigns the guest's room floor so you don't even have to press the button. In addition, small bulkheads have been placed to divide the cabin in two and be able to accommodate more people in one trip.

Breakfast

In these pandemic times one never knows what to expect from breakfasts in hotels, in this hotel everything seemed almost as in the world before, except that the guest receptionist-after asking us for our room number and verifying the possibility of free breakfast as a Gold guest benefit-asked us to show our green pass. I wonder if we hadn't had it what would have happened.

I really appreciate it when real orange juice is served rather than an industrial product, especially in this type of hotel. There were not many people at breakfast, but I still noticed fairly skimpy and equally distracted staff. I had to remember twice that I had ordered a cappuccino, and to request more orange juice for my daughter I ended up serving myself first.

Otherwise, classic buffet, with various islands but little variety. Classic egg station, where you can order omelets and other types of eggs freshly cooked.

Singular is the decision to use small glass containers for single servings and thus avoid the use of the classic pyrex dish that everyone uses.

In conclusion

There is everything you would expect from a Hilton, however, you can see how they try to "optimize" costs by reducing the staff at reception or in the breakfast room. Truly cumbersome, as well as exceedingly exorbitant, is the cost of parking 32€/day: if you park in places outside the hotel you have to leave the keys at the front desk, and if, as happened to us, you forget something in the car you have to queue again at the front desk to request the key and then to return it.

The light and space that is offered in the common areas counterbalances the low ceilings in the rooms, it feels like being on a cruise ship since if you raise your hand you touch the ceiling.

• Hilton Honors