Where to stay Adelaide – Adelaide Hilton
The Adelaide Hilton is one of that city’s long-standing luxury hotels. Greedy Girl has stayed there countless times over the years and always remembered it fondly.
It still has a very solid reputation, especially for its executive lounge. On a recent sojourn we wanted a spot to chill out the night before we flew home to Melbourne and secured a deal giving us access to the lounge.
There’s a feeling of space around the Hilton. It fronts on to Victoria Square, with the low-rise Adelaide central market at the back. Check in was easy and going well, until we were informed about the breakfast arrangements.
Apparently only a continental breakfast was on offer in the lounge. To have a full, cooked breakfast one needed to head to the main restaurant – but this would attract a charge of an extra A$10 per person.
Honestly? Why not just factor that into the room price instead of doing a ‘nickel and dime’ on patrons at check in? Sigh.
The rooms were spacious enough but the level of furnishings seemed a tad plain. As you can see from the photographs here, the decor is fairly bland. Still, the king sized bed was comfortable enough and there were plenty of pillows.
Executive room king bed
Desk area
One issue was the noise emanating from the air-conditioner. We turned it off but it still emanated a high-pitched sound. Late in the evening we needed to get the maintenance crew in to check it out. Thankfully it was rectified, otherwise getting to sleep might have been an issue.
Sadly, what Greedy Girl remembered as a very luxurious bathroom was also a bit unremarkable. There was one of her pet hates – nowhere to put the toiletry bag – and the shower cubicle was an odd shape and quite small. Still, the toiletries were by Peter Thomas Roth – decent quality.
Bathroom
Given we’d been on a culinary road trip, we just wanted to pull up a chair in the lounge and relax for the evening. There was an afternoon tea service, which was OK, with a selection of cakes and other nibbles, but we were saving ourselves for happy hour.
Afternoon tea
Being a Saturday night, there was a decent level of patronage. We helped ourselves to gin and tonics (having had enough wine at various tastings in McLaren Vale) and sampled a few items of food, including curry puffs, fried meat dumplings and some fairly good smoked salmon. Was it extraordinary? No, but reasonably comfortable.
Decent smoked salmon
The lounge is towards the back of the building so there’s no view to speak of. One can watch planes coming into land at Adelaide Airport in the distance.
Breakfast the next morning was just the basics. It’s been a long time since Greedy Girl has seen these mini boxes of breakfast cereal – not exactly special like the varieties we received at The Fat Duck.
A trip down memory lane …
Breakfast items
A bonus, however, was a fresh orange juice press. This is a huge tick of approval. Greedy Girl rarely drinks orange juice (especially the horribly sweet, pre-prepared stuff that seems most ubiquitous) but it’s a bonus in hotels, especially in Asia or other hot climates when one needs to sleep in air-conditioning.
The juicer – a big bonus
We availed ourselves of cereal, fruit, toast, juice and a coffee from a machine. Perfectly edible.
There were plenty of staff but they didn’t seem to engage with patrons in any major way. We weren’t asked for our room number (presumably being able to access the executive lounge floor was enough) but there didn’t seem to be any warmth or passion for hospitality.
Adelaide doesn’t have a lot of luxury hotels but this couldn’t truly be described as a luxurious experience. The hotel celebrated its 35th anniversary in early November. This might be luxe by Adelaide standards but it was a pretty underwhelming experience.
Adelaide Hilton
233 Victoria Square, Adelaide
hilton.com/hotels/adelaide-hilton
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