Guests are often frustrated by hotel heating and air conditioning. You may have to leave your room key in a slot to turn it on, and the system might be motion-activated so your room gets too hot or too cold when you’re gone. Thermostats may be locked to limit cooling, which is why guests have been hacking their thermostat for years. In Europe, coin-operated air conditioning is surprisingly common.
Yet one Hilton hotel in Southern California doesn’t even give their guests access to heating and air conditioning on demand. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s the other, and sometimes guests aren’t allowed to use either one.
The Embassy Suites Santa Ana Orange County Airport does not offer year-round heating and air conditioning. It’s one or the other – sometimes neither.
Our HVAC system is a two pipe system which means we have HEAT or AIR CONDITIONING. Both are not available at the same time in the building.
They offer heat when the temperature is 55 or less, and air conditioning when outside temperatures are 70 degrees or higher. They do not offer either heat or air conditioning between 55 and 70 degrees.
However, they offer space heaters at the front desk. Space heaters for guest use in a hotel seems like a very bad idea to me. Surely the fire marshal would agree?
No hvac available between 55F-70F
byu/Large_Device_999 inHilton
The “single-pipe” or “two-pipe” HVAC systems, which allow for only heating or cooling at a time, were especially common in mid-20th-century buildings, roughly from the 1940s to the 1970s. These systems were designed primarily to save on infrastructure and operational costs and were widely used in apartments, office buildings, and institutional buildings like schools and hospitals.
Retrofitting these buildings with systems that allow for simultaneous heating and cooling zones is costly, which is why many of these buildings maintain the original configuration. However,
- This hotel was built in 1985.
- It was renovated 11 years later.
- There have been 40 years to adjust this.
Orange County, California has generally mild weather. For months of the year the average daily high temperature hovers just below 70 degrees, and for several months overnight lows average over 55. There are likely entire months where this published temperature range allows them not to offer any HVAC service at all, if they even stick rigorously to it.
Guests should be informed up front about the lack of available heating and air conditioning. And a policy of not offering heating at 55 degrees seems insane to me… if they need to switch, switch at 62 and 68?
How is this compatible with Hilton brand standards?
The Civic hotel in Vancouver (autograph collection) is the same way. At least it was when I stayed there a few years ago.
This doesn’t sound too good for the Hilton
I just read the Tripadvisor reviews. Filter for 6 months and almost every review is 1 star . Appears to be many issues other than temperature control such as running out if towels, beds with no linens and being told sorry we jave no more linens. Personally, Homewood Suites John Wayne Airport is excellent. I have stayer there many times.
Same system at newly remodeled/reopened Residence Inn Munich Central, formerly Four Points. Great hotel overall, completely renovated (except for the old HVAC) but the temperature swings in spring and fall were less than pleasant and the climate control was completely disabled until they turned on the A/C for the summer.
Both Embassy Suites at LAX have the same heat OR cool for ghe whole building design.
The GM sounds like he/she needs to be fired immediately. Terrible reviews and terrible hospitality. Hotels have gone to crap lately but this is exceptionally bad.
Wasn’t Embassy Suites some other brand before the mid 80s, maybe all those builds in the area were the same cheap builder
Went through this last New Years at a Prince hotel in Tokyo. One morning it was 79 degrees in the room. Fortunately we moved hotels after 3 days and could control the thermostat at the new hotel. It was miserable in the morning sweating trying to shower.
For me it’s not about either but the fact there needs to be air movement in the room. Does the system operate on a fan mode? Do the windows open fully? Can there be a breeze?
If we are talking stale room air, I would consider this so bad I would dispute the charges with my credit card company.
I’ve stayed in more than 100 hotels spread over practically every European country over the last 30 years and I’ve never ever come across coin operated air conditioning, neither have I ever heard of it. What’s your source for this?
If I was staying there I would get one of those space heaters. With it, those temperatures would be easy to handle.
The Former Andaz Wall Street now Hyatt Centric Wall Street is similar can either be in “heat” mode or “A/C” mode
Its Orange County, a backwards looking red county that’s not progressive, so it makes 100% sense.
Things were better in the 80s according to local politicians, and they’d rather lie than admit to progress.
Stupid comment Jake
Stayed at this hotel, simply terrible.
Embassy Suites was Holiday Inn decades ago. Poor design saved by breakfast.
Have encountered this in France and Germany (and even South Korea) it’s really not worth traveling to either country and staying in a hotel outside the dead of winter or peak of summer, because it is absolute HELL to stay in, for example, the CDG airport Moxy and have to pick between sweating your brains out or opening the window 100% to hear insane 90dB noise through the whole night while trying to sleep. Europe is really behind the 3rd world, this doesn’t happen in say Thailand or Cambodia. If the warm-earthers have their say, it’ll be all over the US.
I worked at that hotel along with another with a 2 pipe system. It’s a pain from a guest service standpoint during the days where the temp is on the border and an individual guest’s personal preferences run counter to what the hotel has chosen to run. I was pretty good with calling when to run heat or a/c and 99.9% of guests never noticed. We did have signage in the rooms by the thermostat. You could control the fan in the room which determined whether the heat or ac came out of the vent and at what speed, but you just had no say over whether it was heat or ac.
I don’t remember the details but it was definitely a prohibitively expensive fix for minimal returns to install a brand new system for the hotel. 330 days out of the year it was a non-issue.
This happened to me at the Hilton MSP Airport back in 2008. At that time, it was set for cooling until September 30 and heating starting on October 1. I was there the last week in September and it was extremely cold. They issued space heaters if you wanted one, as, like here, there was no other way to produce heat. I have not stayed there since, so I don’t know if it is still that way or not.
I checked in to the Holiday Inn Kensington Station in London, December of 2022, a crew hotel. My “upgrade” wasn’t available but would so next morning. Next morning, I got my upgrade. The room was “freezing” (my words!) so I turned on the HVAC and set it for 17°C. For the next 3 days, I asked numerous times for their maintenance department to fix the HVAC. Management ignored my requests to get the HVAC ON! No air…hot or cold! I “stole” a space heater being used from the hallway which only vaguely helped. On checkout, the “manager is busy” (isn’t the manager ALWAYS busy when you ask?). I would have waited until “hell froze over” but my cab was waiting. I was told that my bill would be adjusted. Didn’t happen. Polite letters were written to IHG in the UK and the US. Never got the courtesy of a reply. I cut up my IHG Chase card, transferred my 400,000 points (at a slight loss) to something else, got the hotel removed from our crew hotel list AND…a one star review on TripAdvisor. Buh bye IHG!
Its been this way for 40 yrs at this hotel, when it was built. It’s a worldwide phenomenon. Breaking news. California hotel. Click. Bait.
Very common in Europe that a hotel sets its system on either Heat or on Cool, and a few countries mandate which months of the year to make the switch. I travel in October and May because those are the months they make the switch. Heating is especially good in Central and Eastern Europe, AC not so good. But I have had to ask for a space heater the past two years because the hotels have caught on to limiting their thermostats like American hotels.
It’s the humidity that can build up quickly. Nothing like a cool sweaty bed to disrupt sleep. And don’t get me started on the beach resorts that have a HVAC cut-off when you open the balcony doors. I’ve heard cruise ships also do this.
No heat unless it dips under 55???? How is this legal?
The Hampton Inn in Dundeen Scotland is the same way. It was so blooming hot – had a hard time sleeping.
This explains a lot… I stayed in a very expensive Hilton in London (Canary Wharf) two summers ago and pressing the buttons on the thermostat did nothing to cool the room, so I called the front desk – and they changed the temperature remotely for me!! So I had to basically call them every time I wanted the temperature changed. But I could actually see the number lower after they did it. I couldn’t believe it and didn’t understand why you would have such a system. On top of that their shower pressure was the lowest I’ve encountered in any hotel for at least two decades… I’m thinking water saving along with energy saving going on… I thought the whole concept absurd that I would pay lots of money to stay at a 4* hotel in London but the HVAC and shower would be worse than at home… Didn’t feel like much of a vacation
It’s not a “policy,” it has nothing to do with California since there are hotels and other buildings throughout the world with this problem. It’s a faulty and archaic design. Unfortunately, we need to wade through reviews when selecting a hotel in order to rule out properties like this. I’ve been at properties that are so cold that I’ve had to turn on the blow dryer in the bathroom, shut the door, then scurry back under the covers while waiting for the bathroom to warm up. But now, they’ve got that covered by supplying hair dryers that require constant pressure on the switch to operate. Maybe, if enough people don’t book these hotels, some of them will fix the problem. At a minimum, they should prominently present the situation on their websites.
Unlike Elsa in Frozen, the cold does bother me!
It exactly what russia does so are we heading in that direction
I lived in a modern apartment building near DC that had an building-wide HVAC system that either was AC for everyone OR heat for everyone. I could somewhat mitigate too much heat by opening the windows varying degrees, but nothing to do when it’s hot but AC isn’t running. Didn’t stay there long.
I believe individual temperature control and air conditioning are required for a hotel to receive a 2 star rating…
Thus this hotel should be accurately described as 1 or no star rated property.