A 2-Night Stay at the Hilton (Yalong Bay, Hainan China)

I don’t like writing bad reviews because it usually clouds good things about the hotel-however in this case I can’t say that is true. First, we called the Hilton Yalong Bay the day of booking and spoke to Manager “Koi” on duty at that time. later that week (1-2 days later we arrived), (July 16/17 booked through Wechat), we were told the beach was in swimming condition and safe for 3/4 year olds. Arrived July 19th (they have airport pick up but didn’t bother sharing that information), we got to the hotel-we played in the pool for most of the day, saw construction happening however our son was fine in the pool so we figured -“go later after his nap”, later after the nap a notice was delivered on paper to each room by a service worker who stated that the beach will be out of service for three hours. In Chinese-no other language available for notice. The next day we decided to make that “the beach day”, after the rain, we headed to the beach where we were stopped at a beach chair barricade and told that the beach is closed and if we choose to disregard and go down now BEFORE construction starts, there is no guarantee we will have access to the hotel from the beach entrance meaning we would need to sneak into the beach entrance of another hotel down the way or leave via public beach access and find our own way back. We decided to go and at least see the finished portion of the beach. We walked down to the water-unfinished, choppy waves (not safe for children), and frankly quite polluted as many dredging ships were going along the coast while backhoe fleets were levelling the section of the beach directly behind Hilton (almost exclusively). Around 4:40pm (10 minutes before I wrote this review we were told the beach is out of commission for the entire day-got notice about beach closure at the next of the day. Nice *insert sarcasm here*. Many upset patrons of the hotel refused to accept that there was no compensation, especially after the rain out of the BBQ Buffet the night before of 398RMB :/ Here I am-writing this as a warning to #stay at the Pullman hotel if you are set on a Yalong Bay resort as they provide golf cart service to the public beach access and offer generally all the same things as the Hilton-the construction is not of Hilton and should not state they know the construction will be done soon as it is public beach. The beach construction has changed the beach into a more aggressive wave beach than what it has been in the past where one could walk pretty far out into the water before getting into swimming depth of the beach (it seems). Recommend checking Haiting as their beach seems to be relatively free of maintenance. For Hilton, I’d suggest compensating with HHonours Points as offering to switch to room to ocean view from garden view is a bit of an annoyance (especially on the last day of the stay), and is bit tarnished by the amount of long arm excavators and dredging boats in the pictures :/ After being told that they would get a flood of bad reviews this month of July they have now offered to upgrade the room free of charge OR extend checkout to 2pm…well, thanks for trying. I am indeed sour as originally we considered the Pullman but the direct access to the beach was specifically why we chose the Hilton. Many people made similar statements. By the way  breakfast buffet is bland in flavour, decent selection but the only thing with flavour other than beverages is the bakery selection. 150¥ or whatever it was, I’d only pay 100¥ MAX for what the quality of the flavour they had-snob note, an omelette is not a fried egg wrapped around a sausage XD sorry Hilton. Sincerely disappointed. Better marketing and advertising for the future is what I recommend.

In the end (as this review has been a "living" review through the writing process, we have accepted the offer of the family buffet? I have heard about it this morning but, meh, my wife says it is what it is-might as well take it :/ Here is to hoping the food at dinner tonight is better than the breakfast? :p

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