Hilton Salwa Beach Resort & Villas

Peri D6 months ago

Would we stay here again? No….||||As someone who has stayed in many different Doha hotels over the years, Hilton Salwa is characteristically a “resort”, operating in “quantity over quality” mode. I’ll split my review into categories to avoid an incoherent brain dump of a review. ||||STAFF - The staff, for the most part, are absolute gems. Special mention to Vine at the Souq kitchen buffet for breakfast who always had a smile on her face! The cleaning staff work tirelessly to clear tables and keep the floor swept.||Pool staff - Andrew, Paul, Simon, Jerry…and Vlad the Shisha guy, were all a real pleasure to interact with. Great social etiquette just the right amount of “checking in” on us at the sunbeds without being invasive. Darren at both the pool and Water Park was a pleasure to connect with and would spot us a mile off and stop for a chat.||Entrance staff, valet, buggy drivers and bell boys…all true gentleman with a brilliant manner when greeting both adults and children. Shout out to the lovely man in a beanie hat on the security gate who greeted us with “welcome back” when our taxi driver dropped us back at 1am,2am and even 3am (on NYE!).||The reception/front desk staff however…other reviews have mentioned it and I’m going to say the same thing. The finesse you expect, is somewhat lacking, especially from Ekaterina who refused to look up from her computer screen even when I was stood right in front of her. I’ve never stayed in a hotel where the front desk staff don’t look up and acknowledge your presence. The extremely remote location of this resort probably means that they employ whoever they can get for “middle tier” roles as those who are more refined and have the etiquette and finesse required for front desk, are snapped up by the better hotels in Doha.||Which leads me to the overall vibe of this place…the staff who are the most grateful to have jobs (the African, Indian and Philippino staff) are the most pleasant and hardworking while the ones who have a more supervisory/management role (usually from other Arab or European countries) walk around in suits with all of the arrogance but none of the competence, which really shows when the operations start falling apart under their watch.||||FOOD - the breakfast buffet is extensive although slightly lacking in variety on the patisserie front. It’s a large buffet which means it’s trickier to manage and there seemed to be a lot of “filler” items to create the illusion of quantity. There was always enough to eat however and the tables are scattered around so it doesn’t feel like a staff canteen like some breakfast buffets tend to. The mascots who visit for the kids are a lovely touch and they take time to play around with adults as well. ||Dante(Italian) and Levantine (Arabic) - no complaints although the latter has the edge on quality of food and taste. Room service menu is one of the most limited ones I’ve ever seen however and the woman who took my order one evening read back my order as “pasta with chicken and two fish and chips” when I had very clearly said “pasta with mushrooms and two mac and cheese”. Her English was perfect but she was distracted during the call. ||||HOUSEKEEPING - probably the most inconsistent and frustrating part of our stay as everyday was a new mystery of what we’d have to call up to “correct”. Every day of our 10 day stay we found that they took away towels and failed to replace the same number. So with 4 of us in a room, we’d return from the pool to find they had taken away 4 towels and only replaced 2. They almost never replaced the face towels/flannels after removing the used ones. On one occasion they removed and didn’t replace the used towels we had hung up despite their own instruction for guests to hang up towels we are happy to use again. Another day they took away a bath robe which was frustrating because we used these to bring our two kids back from the pool and there was really no reason for them to remove it. The biggest shocker was the one day I had decided to spend the day in my room for self care, I had housekeeping ringing the room to ask when I will be leaving and telling me to make sure I turned off the “do not disturb” sign. Maybe a “do you require a housekeeping service today” would have been better than being spoken to like I was stopping them from ticking a room off their list. Truly the most disorganised and unrefined element of our stay.||||LOCATION - This place is closer to Saudi Arabia than it is to Doha, which is not a problem if you are looking for a resort holiday where you don’t need to go out for anything. Uber, Karwa taxi and food delivery services do not operate in the area. There is a shuttle service that runs at 11am, 3pm and 7.30pm to the Villagio mall but it is first come first served and we were unable to get a seat on a few occasions. We felt very trapped and isolated at the hotel and spent a lot of extra money on taxis. The journey time is 1hour one way so the two hour round trip really was quite frustrating. If you wish to explore Doha, rethink your hotel option but if you are looking for a resort break and can overlook the issues detailed in my review, there are enough positives for you to give it a go.