Daniel B.
Yelp
We stayed at The Westin Hilton Head Island Resort & Spa for a wedding weekend on the island. I give this hotel 3.5 stars rounded up to 4. I can see why, at least at the time of writing this review, it has a 3-star average with 312 reviews. Among island resorts and Westin properties, it might be average or below average. I think I liked this hotel a little bit better than my wife who I think was expecting something more luxurious overall. Ultimately, I enjoyed our stay. However, the purpose of our visit wasn't a getaway or family vacation or something like that. Therefore, our approach/experience with the resort may be different than typical.
We stayed in room 1019 on the 1st floor. It has an "island view." To be more specific, it has a dog park view. Not great, but we did have a peek of the ocean. We could smell pot from our balcony. The smell of pot doesn't bother me as much as it does my wife. That's probably another reason why she didn't like this place as much as me. We wanted a room with one king bed, but got two queens instead. We asked and there were no available king rooms. We booked 3 months in advance. Not a big deal. The room was clean, comfortable, and well-appointed enough. We watched YouTube on the TV. The Wi-Fi internet speeds on my laptop were fine for email and general web browsing. My favorite part of the room was the bathroom with double sinks, cool modern lighting, and rain shower head. Countertop space around the sinks was a little tight, but that's just me being nitpicky. Generally, I thought the room looked good.
I do have to mention that one night, I saw a small cockroach high up on the wall, near the sliding glass door. The room has a high ceiling so I just left it.
The cost of our stay was $249 per night. It was a wedding room block rate.
The hotel layout is a little strange and it leads me to believe the buildings were designed and built in piecemeal over time. Not uncommon for resort hotels. We had long walks to and from our room every time. And from what I heard from other guests, they had long walks too. It had something to do with where the elevators are located. They had to walk the entire length of our floor just to get to an elevator. Maybe not the most efficient floorplans. On the bright side, the forced exercise is good.
We got to enjoy brunch on the resort's only private veranda. The private veranda is part of the Presidential Suite. The Presidential Suite is the best suite at the resort. Expectedly, it was very nice with large, spacious rooms and a massive, deep bathtub in the master bath. The veranda is sizable as well. It has a firepit and terrific views of the ocean, pools, and beautiful koi pond and fountain below. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get the firepit to work. I think it may have been broken and/or out of fuel. The bride and groom arranged for the hotel to provide brunch food, OJ, coffee, etc. I liked everything, especially the fresh fruit and breakfast burritos. They hit the spot and gave us the energy we needed for the long road trip back to North Carolina.
We ventured onto the beach once. The Westin has chairs, umbrellas, and towels for guest use. We also explored the pool area. However, we didn't get any proper beach or pool time due to time constraints. Some of our friends and fellow wedding guests did. One even rented a private cabana. So, as I mentioned in the first paragraph above, we didn't really have the typical island resort stay. If anything, it was more like a business trip.
We did check out two of the restaurants/bars on the property. I left separate Yelp reviews for them:
* View 32 - open for lunch and dinner daily, 11:30am-10:00pm
https://www.yelp.com/biz/view-32-hilton-head-island
* Oceans - bar open Thursday-Saturday nights, 6:00pm-12:30am
https://www.yelp.com/biz/oceans-hilton-head-island
I love taking pictures and the property has some nice spots for that. Examples include the fountain out front (next to the driveway), the plant wall inside the lobby, and outside on the boardwalk next to the beach.
The Westin isn't gated anywhere and the public is "free" to park anywhere. If you're a guest, you do need to display your parking pass. I'm not sure how strictly they enforce parking here though. It didn't seem strict to me. I recommend parking in the underground garage which has direct elevator/stair access to the hotel lobby. During our visit, there was only one electric vehicle charging spot, located in the garage.
Service was fine. We interacted with only one employee and that was to check in. Our room wasn't cleaned during our entire stay and we were told that would be the case beforehand, I believe due to a staff shortage. Again, not a big deal to us in this case.