Hampton Inn & Suites Mt. Juliet

I should have paid more attention to recent reviews of this property, but I was swayed by the 4.5 TA average. This is not a 4.5 hotel. Maybe it used to be, I don’t know. I want to start with talking about how hotels use texting to communicate with customers. Around 2 hours before our check-in time, I received a text from a front desk supervisor asking how everything was with our room. Again, it was 2 hours before we were even allowed to check in, so obviously I’m not going to have thoughts on the room. (Side note: we had requested a digital key, which had not been delivered in the app, so it’s not like the room was available early.) More on their texting in a moment. We arrived to find an employee attempting to fix the front door. There are two sliding doors at the entrance, and the interior one was locked. So, the employee was locked out, as were we. I called the hotel number to see if another employee would answer, but none did. We waited 10 minutes for a guest walking through the lobby to come over and trigger the door to open. At check-in, we were told that the digital key system at the hotel isn’t working, and that they could only give us one physical key. Weird, but whatever. We also weren’t offered our Diamond benefit, but that oversight is becoming pretty common at Hilton properties, so it wasn’t surprising. The room was mostly fine, except for a desk chair that’s so beat up that foam is showing on the armrests, as well as a badly stained window curtain. Also, when the toilet is refilling with water after being flushed, it makes the sound of a wailing animal. None of that is a big deal to me, but all of it falls short of the usual Hampton Inn standard. Oh, and the ice maker on our floor was broken, and the hot tube is out of order (sounds from previous reviews that’s been the case for a very long time.) On the plus side, there are a ridiculous number of channels available on the TV, so you’ve got that going for you. What really got us was the fire alarm at 1 a.m. on our first night. We scrambled to get dressed to leave the room when, maybe 90 seconds after the alarm had started, it stopped. Don’t know if that was the result of a prank, or an employee mistake, or what. Whatever the cause, it wasn’t awesome. So, back to the hotel texts. Around noon on the day after our first night, we got another text from a front desk supervisor asking how our stay was going. I replied with many of the details from this review. I didn't receive a response until the following day. A note to hotel management: if you’re going to use text messaging, it should be for nearly-real-time communication with guests. Don’t treat it like email and wait until the next day to respond The supervisor offered to try to make things right, which was appreciated. But as a cherry on top of everything, our room was not cleaned after our second night, despite that being the hotel’s promise. I didn’t even see the point of mentioning it to the staff. This may have been a great property at some point in the past, but it isn’t anymore. There are so many long-unaddressed maintenance issues to go with below-average service. If this were a budget hotel, then I would say, “OK, that’s what you should expect.” But when a hotel charges what this one does, under the Hampton Inn brand, there are expectations that should be met. I highly recommend staying elsewhere.

Our stay at the Hampton in Mt. Juliet was a good one - with a couple of exceptions. Our room was clean and comfortable, but check out the photo of the desk chair. Looks like it's time for a replacement. The icemaker on our floor was not working, but we did find ice in the lobby. If you're an early-riser, don't count on breakfast. We had to leave at around 5:30AM and there was nothing to eat - not even a pre-wrapped pastry.

No room service for 3 nights despite my requests and their promises. Dirty towels and full trash cans with no place to dispose of it. I was told the General Manager “Leslie” would call me and she never did. I requested a call every day of my stay.

We stayed there in Aug. Noticed in Sept our credit card had an extra $75+ charge. Contacted the hotel, was assured somebody would get back to me in a couple days. Couple weeks go by, call again, same thing-no response from the hotel. Reach out to Hilton's customer service in Oct explain to them the issue. At first they couldn't find my submitted email, emailed again. Assured by them somebody would reach out to me. Nobody did. Now they are telling me to contact the hotel directly. If that would have worked the 1st time I wouldn't have been reaching out to them. It is now Nov, no response from anybody! It is very clear they don't value customer service. Up until this point I would have said great hotel.

Clean hotel. Friendly staff. Great location. Decent breakfast. Only issue we had was two of the nights we stayed there was a bus with high school aged baseball players staying there. They were rather loud in the hallway into the early morning hours.