Hilton Tampa Downtown

Don't book an event at this hotel. I have previously booked wedding events for my family members at other Hilton Hotels and have been very happy with their professionalism and customer service. We had a wedding reception here, and we were given a bill of around $19,000 with a 24% service charge. Multiple services weren't provided at our wedding reception despite being slapped with a 24% service charge. 1. The cake we bought was never served to our guests. Nobody ate dessert. The cake wasn't even wheeled to the center of the dance floor. Multiple guests never saw the cake at all. The photographer couldn't take proper photographs because of failure of service with the cake. 2. Champagne wasn't poured on time for a champagne toast. We toasted to water. We gave the event planner a timeline of when the toast would occur, yet a failure of service from the Hilton Tampa Downtown resulted in no champagne served by the time of the toast. 3. The event planner confirmed in writing he would bring a bird cage for guests to drop off their gifts into. This was not brought and our parents had to collect wedding gifts from our guests the entire night. 4. Lack of silverware at our tables. My elderly father asked for a spoon and was never given one. He had to eat dal (soup) with a fork. 5. Blatant lack of service and callous administration. I voiced my concerns to Management and I was refused a phonecall to review significant concerns regarding failure of services of the Hilton Tampa Downtown despite a mandated 24% service charge. The e-mails I received in response to our concerns are pasted below. This is how you can expect to be treated by Management if you book an event at the Hilton Tampa Downtown. If you're going to spend thousands of dollars for a wedding reception, my advice is to book elsewhere. Message from Hotel Management pasted below: I heard your complaints from XXX and I spoke to all who were working your event and we feel that we have delivered on what was contracted. I don’t see a reason for the call at this point. Those are the same three complaints you mention over and over and somehow $2500 will make it all go away and moral decency would be restored. Your cake was left in Brandon somewhere and it got here with no time to spare before service. Asked your caterer or whomever was in charge of the cake to what happened and wasn’t the cake here in time. Your caterer or planner or whomever on your side should have told us when to serve the champagne. Champagne was served, but obviously not when you wanted it. We had the champagne and we had the servers. I didn’t see anything on your signed contract/Banquet event order about closed gift box, usually that is your responsibility to provide when asked for one staff scrambled to come up with something. These are the answers to your questions. Peculiar that you are raising your concerns 3 weeks after the event took place!

For our 10/17/15 wedding we had a lot of friends and families traveling so we wanted to do everything in one place. We live in downtown Tampa and love the Hilton. We did our ceremony out in the courtyard, cocktail hour by the pool and reception in the ballroom. Everything was fabulous and turned out exactly how we imagined! Jennifer and her entire team were wonderful! To our benefit, the ballrooms were just remodeled as well. They gave our guest a fabulous room rate and everyone was completely impressed and had a blast. I wish I could do it all over again!

The Hilton Downtown Tampa is a great place to have your wedding, for the money. Comparable venues in terms of appearance and luxury were several thousands of dollars more. Another great thing about the Hilton is that it was recently renovated. The inside is beautiful, especially the chandeliers in the ballrooms. We were able to save much more money on decorations as well due to the new renovations. We did not need to have curtains or streamers or any crazy lighting because the room with the chandeliers was beautiful on its own. Also, the hotels rooms were all redone, so you know your guests were staying in amazing rooms that you won't feel embarrassed about. I worked with Jennifer and Maribel. Jennifer is great and Maribel is ok. Sometimes she is hard to get a hold of, and sometimes I would email her with no response, or she wouldn't understand what I was saying. I would then speak to Jennifer. A couple of other complaints I have are that I did not get the bridal suite included for Friday night, even after spending 18k there, and the bridal suite was open for the night. The food was only okay, and I was not blown away by it on my wedding day. The taste testing was much better than the food actually was. The last complaint I had was that most, if not all, of my guests were able to get their hotel rooms from other means that were cheaper than my room block. Some simply went online and booked it for $30 cheaper than my block. It was embarrassing for me when they pointed this out to me, and for the others who didn't notice, I felt bad because they trusted me that the block was the best price. This Hilton points are a total bonus, as now my husband and I are going to get many free nights all over the world for quite some time. Also, the rest of the staff including the valets, bellmen, etc. are very helpful and friendly. Everyone did a great job of making me feel special on my wedding day. \ Overall I was very pleased, as was my family and guests. Hilton downtown is in a great location and is easy to get to. There are places to head out to for the "afterparty" and I had my rehearsal dinner at Jackson's, making the whole weekend easy for my guests. If I had it to do over, I would still have my wedding reception at the Hilton, it was beautiful.

Great rooms. Beautiful decor. Only issue is that nothing is included. I had the presidential suite and parking was not included. That was definitely disappointing.

Had guest stay here and they really enjoyed the hotel and amenities

I loved having our ceremony at this venue. My husband wanted his (our) dog in the wedding, so we were looking all over for something affordable AND dog-friendly. This hotel allowed our dog to be part of the ceremony and was beautiful on top of that! The downtown ambiance in addition to the fountains in the background was beautiful and perfect! A slight disclaimer though... you will need to invest in some type of sound for the ceremony. (We used our DJ). While the fountains create beautiful pictures and ambiance, they are loud in the background. All hotel staff was exceptionally helpful as well!