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3003 reviews
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Mar 27, 2025It's a 5 star, and it's a 1 star.
Having read both 5-star and 1-star reviews of this hotel, I can say that they are BOTH right. My wife and I visit Santa Fe to go to the Santa Fe Opera, and we're really not interested in the downtown shopping thing. We are also casual gamblers, so the casino is a nice -- but not necessarily important -- perk (more on this later). The location really works for us, as we don't have to deal with downtown traffic on opera nights, and we do the pre-show dinners at the opera, so dining isn't critical either. PROS It's a pretty nice hotel overall. Pool is large and has a nice bridge feature. Rooms are spacious and clean. We haven't experienced any issues with our rooms. The wait staff in the food places has been polite and helpful. Casino dealers are friendly-ish. Front desk personnel have been OK. Some better than others. The main restaurant is really great. Good food, nice atmosphere and excellent service. If you are staying Wednesday through Saturday, you'll find all the restaurants open. It's like a real resort. CONS The complaints about the restaurants being closed are unfortunately legitimate. What's worse, the hotel doesn't let you know this ahead of time, so on our last visit my wife and I -- checking in on a Sunday -- wound up grabbing sandwiches at the deli at the last minute. Decided to get takeout -- there was no room service! -- from the casino bar the next night, and were lucky to be the first in line at the hostess stand. Within a few minutes there was a long line of people trying to do the same, with only one overworked woman acting as hostess, order taker, and waitress. We were pretty pissed off, to say the least. As mentioned, front desk personnel are helpful, sometimes -- but some just don't seem to care. The casino is fine, but I like to play craps and, while they had a table, it was never open. Which brings me to the real problem here -- staffing. After chatting with servers, dealers, and other staff -- both here and at other places in the area -- we realized that these places just can't get help. You can't open a restaurant if you can't get cooks and servers. You can't open a craps table if you can't get dealers. You can't offer room service if you can't get food runners. My guess is that the downtown hotels and restaurants -- being more expensive -- can afford to pay a higher wage, so they get the staff. Out in the boondocks, not so much. BOTTOM LINE All that said, my wife and I are planning another opera trip for August 2025, and we play to stay at the Buffalo Thunder. We'll be OK knowing ahead of time what their shortcomings are and planning around them. If we wanted/needed a first-class hotel experience, we'd stay downtown and pay a lot more. But compared to other Hilton resort hotels, this admittedly isn't on par.
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Jan 21, 20252 Stars pretending to be 5
The excitement of checking in to what we thought was an amazing property with a lot to offer... died upon our first encounter with a thoroughly bored and disinterested receptionist in an empty hotel lobby. It was downhill from there. The best part was the comfortable beds (had nice pillow topped mattresses and down pillows). The fireplace was a welcome part of our room and the view from the balcony awesome. On the downside: The sense of abandonment in the whole property was depressing, and exacerbated by the lack lustre casino and the zombi-like slot machine players. The wifi was almost non-existent. We had to change rooms from one wing to another to chase better reception as none of us were on data, having international SIM cards. This hotel feels like it is not used to having international guests, just domestic tourists it seems. The steam and sauna is not even part of the hotel, and to use it the spa charges USD45! Insane. The room was for a family of 4, but only 2 paper cups supplied with a most basic cheap coffee maker with 2 coffee pods which was too weak to make even 1 mug. No sign of an electric kettle (they only cost USD10 in Costco, folks!) and the temperature outside is 20deg F! We could not make hot chocolate or teas. Hilton has lost all its sense of prestige and luxury, but continues to charge like it was still 5 stars?
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Jan 07, 2025
Disappointing
We had stayed at this property before and found it acceptable, but this trip was a complete disappointment. The wi-fi went in and out the whole week which made keeping up with business at a distance difficult. There were no luggage trollies at the door and no one to assist us in finding one at this large property. Front desk personnel was completely unhelpful with any of these issues. Restaurants and bars are closed on Sunday & Monday nights so plan to eat in town on those nights. Just a disappointing visit, we’ll be looking at other options for our next Santa Fe excursion.
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Dec 23, 2024Terrible customer treatment
I had made a reservation for a king room with a balcony about a month before my stay and was confirmed that I had that room. I checked in at 4:25pm and went to my room and it was two queen size beds and the furniture was so ratty. The chair was all torn up. It was not very clean. I called and asked why I didn’t get the room I had reserved. I was told they have the right to change the rooms around at their discretion and I said you know I spend a lot of money at this casino and I don’t very often even ask for a room so I was very disappointed in the room. It was shabby and didn’t seem very clean and the guy that I was talking to said well you know you’re welcome to just check out. And I said well I won’t be gambling here anymore! Terrible experience…. Seems like this would taint the Hilton reputation….
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Dec 08, 2024
Ok stay
Hotel was ok but the people in the room next to us were very noisy our second night of our stay. Yelling, TV blaring, etc. We called guest services finally at 11:45pm and security was sent up to their room. They were quiet for about 15 minutes then started up again until 3am!! We reported it to the front desk on check out. Not sure anything will or can be done about it.