Long Island: Hilton Melville/Huntington (May 2018)


My spouse and I stayed at the Hilton Long Island Huntington for two weekend nights in early May 2018. We booked our stay online using the Hilton website. On the day prior to our stay, we used the online check-in system to select our room; however, we were upgraded to the executive floor when we checked in. (As Hilton HHonors Diamond members, we qualified for the floor anyway; however, none of those rooms were available to select during the online check-in process.)

The Hilton Huntington is located on Long Island, a convenient jumping off point for the Hamptons. Bethpage Golf Course is close by, as are local attractions including Sagamore Hill National Historic Site (the home and summer White House for President Theodore Roosevelt), Oheka Castle, and the Vanderbilt Museum and Planetarium. 

Public spaces at the hotel include a spacious lobby with a high-ceilinged atrium, surrounded by large windows, some of which overlook the attractive, indoor pool area that features a hot tub and waterfall in its open two-story space. A fitness center is located nearby. A seasonal outdoor pool, tennis court, and volleyball court are available in the warmer months. The lobby offers the Atrium Bar, behind which sits Mastersons restaurant. The restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and the bar offers food service as well. (You can order food until approximately 11:00 pm, although the bar stays open for drinks until 12:00 midnight on weekdays and 2:00 am on weekends. The Hilton offers another on-site restaurant called Nanking, which features Indian, Thai, and Chinese food. Room service is also available, as is a casual grab-and-go outlet that serves Starbucks coffee and sells bakery products, cold drinks, packaged foods, and forgotten items. The hotel offers a local shuttle service within a 5-mile radius of the hotel from 6:30 am until 10:30 am and then again from 4:00 pm until 8:00 pm. This hotel offers extensive meeting and private event space; on the weekend that we visited, the hotel was overrun by people attending special events in the banquet rooms.
An executive lounge on the fifth (top) floor is accessible to qualified guests; however, it is open during weekdays only. To compensate on weekend, HHonors members are provided with breakfast buffet vouchers and evening bar vouchers for a complimentary soft drink and appetizer. (We had planned to eat dinner elsewhere [at The Refuge and Jewel by Tom Schaudel], but after eating two free starters each night [choose from two kinds of flatbread pizza, calamari, meatball sliders, wings, chicken fingers and fries, soup], we found that we were full and did not need a formal dinner afterward.)

We received vouchers for the buffet breakfast at Mastersons, which runs from 6:30 am until 10:30 am on weekdays and from 7:00 am to 11:00 am on weekends. The breakfast includes cold items like juices, yogurt, fresh fruit, hard-cooked eggs, pastries and breads (including bagels), hot items like coffee, scrambled eggs, mini frittatas, meats (bacon and two shapes of sausage), breakfast potatoes, cheese blintzes, oatmeal, and grits. Made-to-order omelets are also available. 

The hotel offers 300+ guestrooms, including suites, executive floor rooms, and handicap-accessible rooms. Our room had a king-size bed with a nightstand on each side, a sofa bed with a leather ottoman in front of it, and a large piece of furniture that incorporated shelves, (empty) mini-refrigerator, coffee maker, desk (with rolling chair), TV, safe, and drawer space. The bathroom had a traditional combination bathtub/shower, toilet, and long sink vanity. Crabtree and Evelyn toiletries were provided (soap, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion). On the executive level, we also received bathrobes and slippers, and reportedly local newspaper delivery on weekdays.

We enjoyed our stay at the Hilton Long Island Huntington; its location served our purpose, the rooms were spacious, and the weekend executive lounge amenities were generous.







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