Homewood Suites by Hilton Gainesville

Still Disturbingly Bad After All These Years.
Let’s make this easy with a list.
–First rooms smelled strongly of dirty mop water and old cigarette smoke.
–Broken window locks in the bottom floor room.
–Carpets filthy.
–Upholstered furniture in rooms and curtains dirty, dusty.
–Caked dirt along baseboards in all three rooms.
–Old food under dining table.
–Mold in tub area around drain and controls
–Sticky handprints on closet door
–Iron surface sticky and brown
–Ironing board cover filthy
–Gunk on refrigerator and microwave door handles
–Outside trash receptacles and ashtrays overflowing in morning and through mid-​afternoon on all four days
–Lobby area elevator dirty inside: walls, push panel, floor.
–Poor construction: insufficient insulation between floors. If you’re not on the top floor, you’ll hear everything that moves on the floor above.
–A/​c incredibly loud. Large panel unsecured: filter inside disgustingly dirty.
–Housekeeping disregarded DND sign. Four days running.
The only Homewood Suites in Florida that’s equally bad is located in Tallahassee. And not coincidentally, owned by the same franchisee.
Much better experience with the Hampton across Archer Road or even better, the incredibly wonderful Hampton in Ocala off SR 200.
This place has been a disappointment since prior to 2010.
But when you have to stay in Gainesville, it’s usually the last to fill up.
Now you know why.

Some times a great review is not about a perfect visit it’s about how the staff is willing to accommodate. We had a room that had a is sue that couldn’t be resolved. The staff here was very apologetic and went out of there way to keep us coming back as a customer. Hats off to the entire staff at Homewood Suites. We only stayed for one night while visiting University of Florida. I would recommend here to anyone.

I checked into this hotel on 8÷13÷2015 after much consideration for accommodations in the area, I brought my entire family on this business trip and required sufficient space. Based on the space, I then decided to book an extra night on points. The points for this stay was in excess of 76K points. Upon my check in I advised the young lady at the front desk that I had also booked the next night on points. She proceeded to advise me that she couldn’t check me in on both nights because although I booked the same sized room one was non-​smoking and the other was smoking. To my surprise I was unaware that Hilton offered smoking rooms. I then advised her I had no notice that I had a smoking room and that it wouldn’t work for myself and my children as we are all asthmatic. She told me that she would cancel the room for the next night without penalty. I was appalled. I was literally beside myself. Her nonchalant attitude that she would simply «cancel my reservation» and send me on my way was unnerving. I inquired about speaking with a manager and she provided me with business cards.
The next day the morning (prior to 8am) front desk staff were accommodating and kind enough to fix the situation. Just when I had some faith in the property, there’s another issue that presented itself at breakfast. My family is down having breakfast and notice mold on the bread (after having selected bread). The attention was brought to Jess (service staff). She embarrassingly was grateful we pointed out the issue and removed the bread. My question is, how is this even possible? Does the staff not check the quality of the food prior to displaying?
Lastly, it is approximately 5:00pm and myself and my spouse are sitting in the living room watching television and (without a knock or notice) in walks a housekeeper. She quickly left the room. My spouse walked out to the hallway, absolutely upset, and requested the purpose for the entry. She had a walkie talkie in hand and was talking to someone and her only response to my spouse was «I am sorry». We immediately called down to the front desk and the only explanation we received was «there was a glitch in the system that stated our room was vacant not cleaned». Well why didn’t the front desk person properly do their job earlier that morning and why didn’t anyone care to express the fact that they truly cared that we were inconvenienced?
I spend 80% of my month in a hotel and 90% of that time is in a Hilton. I’m convinced I need to refocus my loyalty.

I expected soo much better. We are on a long family vacation. We stayed at another hotel by this same chain and had a superb experience and were expecting a similar level of standard here.
We were wrong.
If I could title this hotel or this review, it would be «Don’t try to be a good hotel, just try to be good ENOUGH.»
You see, there’s not really one huge thing that is drastically wrong here. But at the same time, it’s like every single thing is just good enough to get by. For example, the toilet paper roll holder in the bathroom is broken. It can hold the roll, but if you pull from it, it flies off in your face. None of the doors close securely without being tugged shut — main hotel room door, bathroom door, shower door… all are off. There are ants climbing the walls in the laundry room, and the dryer is supposedly 1 $ per dry. EXCEPT it takes three cycles to actually get your clothes dry so bring your quarters everyone!
Then when you get back from spending three hours in the laundry room with the ants, you find yourself settling in for the night and turning on the tv — — - only to find that the tv signal is horrible and the internet connection is sllloooowwwww.
We had a queen bed suite with the pull out sofa bed for the kids. There was no fitted sheet in the linen bag for the sofa bed and one thin little blanket provided. Two pillows, but one of them was so gross with stains and hairs that we just let it sit in the closet untouched.
We took the elevator up and down to the laundry room and the button panel looks like it’s seen better days. Heck, it looked like it’s seen better years… decades…maybe even generations???
Breakfast/​evening snack food here is… meh. It’s not worth mentioning.
I know it’s not the hotel’s fault too, but the water here in Gainesville seems to be pretty funky. Maybe it’s just a well water we’re not familiar with? The taste is pretty strong — leaves a heavy aftertaste. Makes the coffee horrid. The washed clothes in the laundry have a funk to them and you feel slimy after showering/​washing in general. We’re pretty anxious to get out of here and move on to our next hotel stop to say the least. Even considered cutting our stay off early and seeing if we could get a room at our next stop a day early.
All that said, I can NOT fault the front desk man who was here at our check in and during our first night. I wish I had caught his name. A young-​ish black man. His service and help was way above and beyond anything I could expect. He was friendly and charming and brought us the fitted sheets we needed, changed our quarters for the wash machines, and literally RAN when he said he needed some extra changed in his register so that he wouldn’t keep us waiting longer than necessary. This guy was awesome. I can’t say a single negative thing about his service at all — this review does not reflect on him in any way!

We stayed at this Homewood Suites on a recent trip to Gainesville. The rooms were clean and comfortable.
Free wifi and parking.
The free breakfast was pretty standard– scrambled eggs, waffles, oatmeal, yogurts, cold cereals, bagels, fresh fruit.
The staff was friendly and accommodating.
We’ll definitely consider staying here on our next visit.

Having stayed at zillions (please give me a break, that’s a number!) of hotels, this spot has one key element that differentiates it from the standard fair. The service, from the front desk staff to the maids, was universally friendly, professional and helpful. Every single employee we interacted with during a protracted stay was a true pleasure. Thank you! We look forward to returning!

Overall satisfied with this hotel. The rooms are comfortable and clean. Quiet environment. Free complimentary Wi-​Fi. The workout room has approximately three treadmills and each treadmill has its own small TV that you can watch. I am very impressed with the downstairs lobby breakfast area. There is ample room for everyone to sit. Tables are very nice with comfy chairs.
Scrambled eggs are creamy and moist with a touch of cheese not the standard dried out fair that are in most hotel breakfasts. For healthy eaters there is ample fresh fruit available; yogurt, bananas, and other whole grains. Good variety of large bagels. Also biscuits with gravy. The only negative about the breakfast is the orange juice. I was very surprised that it is not real Florida orange juice. Most Florida hotels provide for real orange juice. This was definitely on the orange Tang side. Stay away. The coffee was decent. Definitely the Dunkin’ Donuts type. Breakfast server was very friendly. Stopped by on a number of occasions to ask if we have everything and to clear away the plates.
I must note that for those with families this is a very convenient location. It is situated right behind a large shopping plaza that contains Target and Publix for those of you that might need anything it is very close by.

Extremely amazing staff! Great rooms and experience overall! Great breakfast basketball court and pool! Only complaints I’ve machine very far away from everything and only 2 luggage carts for entire hotel!

Great new hotel. Great free breakfast. Firm beds. Feather pillows. Friendly and helpful staff. Very nice rooms. Reasonable price. I stay in a lot of hotels and really enjoyed this one.

Clean, comfy, free breakfast, free dinner on weekdays, and mid-​day snacks too. I usually stay on the king/​queen suite bedroom and in addition to the big bed it has a living room, full kitchen and fridge.
Hotel facilities are nicely kept, breakfasts are decent and the staff is super nice and helpful. The only con is that sometimes you have to walk a lot to get to your room as they have separate sections of the hotel around the pool area.
I usually stay here for work but if I needed to stay in Gainesville for some other reason, this hotel is a good choice.

We stayed at this Homewood Suites for five nights — our first stay in a Homewood. Frankly, we were skeptical about the quality of the accommodations and chose it mainly because they were very pet friendly.
Well, we have been very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the accommodations and especially of the staff — front office, housekeeping and kitchen staff. I work in tourism development and have established hotel quality and classification systems, so my praise is based on a lot of experience around the world.
The staff was very customer service oriented, very responsive to requests for extra towels, coffee, and help with carrying breakfast to our room. And they asked us about the medical treatment our dog was receiving at the University of Florida.
The kitchen staff was especially helpful — especially Flower, Jon, Brandon, and Travares. They deserve special recognition!
Breakfast was fine, not fancy, but enough — scrambled eggs, sausages, oatmeal, cereal, fruit, waffle «bar,» juice and plenty of coffee. Each evening a happy hour was served, which included a different main, salad and side dish each day, red and white wine. In all honesty, aside from the salad, the main and side dishes didn’t look very healthy — fried, super sweet or thick sauces. It’s a great that they offer this, but I wonder if just offering decent wine, cheese and crackers would be enough.
Anyway, we would definitely stay in Homewood Suites again.

5 stars all the way– nice clean rooms, good customer service by Kargi and Jonathan. Very accommodating, free wifi worked. Complementary breakfast, family friendly. I will be back.

This was a very nice new hotel. Our room was very clean and everything seemed very fresh. The bed was very comfortable and the room was a really decent size. The one thing I didn’t like very much was the hotel seemed so new but the hot tub seemed really small and also didn’t work. Other than that the staff was all very nice and helpful.
The breakfast in the morning was decent but nothing too impressive and it seemed like they ran out of a few things and didn’t seem to care to refill what was missing.
But if I’m down in Gainesville again and have some points to use again I would stay here again.