The Ambassador Hotel of Waikiki, Tapestry Collection by Hilton

So I stayed here for the 4th of July weekend. We arrived on Friday, and the front desk was outside. I find that very shocking. The front desk worker had a slight attitude making it feel like she didn’t want to deal with us. She was very unemotional and not engaging. It took her 10 minutes to give us our room cards. Which I find quite unusual. Anyways, we head to the elevators and find out the hotel is fully outdoors like an apartment complex. Which to add to that, this place feels more like an apartment complex than Hilton Hotel. The rooms are outside with a view of building. The building is painted white with the doors pink/orange which to me doesn’t match. The room was fine, but overall it is not worth it to stay here. There are much better hotels here that have more amenities and perks that are worth the price. Did I also mention that have no guest laundry service. Outrageous.

I've stayed at this hotel a few times now, some for business, some for leisure. One thing that can be said with confidence about the Ambassador is that the staff here is incredible, and the location is prime. The staff here has, on several occasions, gone out of our way to make our stay more enjoyable. The most recent instance of the staff going out of their way, in my opinion, wasn't even entirely necessary, but the staff moved us to another room farther from some of the noise of the street/pool just to make sure our baby would have better naps. I can't tell you how much that gesture means to us during our extended stay. The lobby is immaculately beautiful, and the seating out of Favorite Son is a really great vibe. The pool deck is pretty nice, and has been a welcome amenity as our baby really loves to be near water, but sometimes the beach just isn't the play for the day. The rooms are always clean, and the housekeeping staff does a really incredible job. On several occasions we returned to our room to find it cleaned and tidied up, and the staff really went out of their way to neatly arrange the baby food/baby snacks over on the little countertop area. The rooms themselves have been brought into the modern era with a mid-century modern facelift. They're not perfect, but they get the job done. Again, more than anything, I'm really impressed with the staff here. They're genuinely good and helpful people, and it goes an incredibly long way. The Ambassador definitely has a "young, modern, and hip" vibe that I think they're primarily looking to attract. I recognize that I'm not that key demographic. But again, they went out of their way to accommodate for us, even after we said we weren't sure that was necessary. These folks genuinely care, and that's worth a ton.

Got two rooms for a family vacation. One room was part of a vacation sales package. In both rooms the bathrooms were dirty. While the rooms appeared to have been recently remodeled, the housekeeping unfortunately needs retraining. The shower floors were brown and unscrubbed from previous guests, the glass shower doors stained and not wiped down (gummy shampoo streaks)--both rooms, the shower dispensers were only taped to the shower wall and one came off when my husband tried to use it. The wall where the hand towel racks were mounted were streaked from rod to floor from previous guests, and the floor was not vacuumed. My husband said he's stayed in cleaner motels. And for trying to sell us on a vacation package, the view from our room was of a parking garage. If we had known it was a parking garage view ahead of time, we probably would have tried to make some other arrangement. We travel for business and so see lots of parking garage views from hotel windows. This was a family vacation--our first time away in three years. So, overall, really disappointing. Don't be taken in by the hilton grand vacation sales pitch. Not worth the experience. And this hotel specifically is probably best left for business travel, not vacation.

I recently stayed at the Hilton Tapestry Collection Waikiki and unfortunately came away disappointed. The biggest issue is the property itself. The building feels very old and somewhat run down. It isn't terrible, but it certainly doesn't have the clean, modern resort atmosphere that most people expect from a Hawaii vacation. The room also had several maintenance issues. The shower had extremely low water pressure, and it took several minutes before the hot water became warm. The USB charging port on the nightstand did not work, so I had to charge my phone and AirPods using the bathroom outlet. The refrigerator also failed to keep food cold, causing my yogurt to spoil. The most frustrating part of my stay, however, was the noise from the room next door. When I checked in, the dogs in the neighboring room were barking loudly. I called the front desk, and Lance genuinely tried to help. Unfortunately, the owners had left the dogs alone in the room, and the hotel had no other rooms available, so I could not be moved. I was later told the guests with the dogs would be relocated, but that never happened. Although the barking subsided when the owners returned, the dogs continued to bark periodically well into the evening, making it difficult to relax. As a Hilton Honors Gold member, I was told my room would receive daily housekeeping. After the second day, it had not been serviced, so I called the front desk and they corrected the issue. When housekeeping did come, however, they failed to replenish the shampoo, requiring another request. Individually, none of these issues would have ruined my stay, and I'm confident the front desk staff would have done their best to address them had I continued calling. The problem was that there simply seemed to be one issue after another. By the end of my stay, I felt like I was spending too much time contacting the front desk over things that should have worked properly in the first place. The staff members I interacted with, particularly Lance, were courteous and genuinely tried to help. My concerns are directed more at the condition of the property and its overall operation than at the employees themselves. Overall, this hotel met the minimum standard for a place to sleep, but it did not provide the quality or vacation experience I expect from a Hilton-branded property. I would likely choose a different hotel on my next visit to Waikiki.

Stayed 10 nights. I want to lead with this: every staff member I dealt with was genuinely kind and clearly wanted to help. That's the only reason this isn't a lower rating. The problems, and why they matter: Valet is the only parking option — no self-parking, no street parking. Every single morning took ~20 minutes to get my car back. The valet staff were visibly hustling, but the lot is too narrow and the morning crew too thin for the volume. This isn't a staffing effort problem, it's a management planning problem, and it ate real time out of every day of my trip. Room maintenance was consistently behind: non-working outlets, a shower door with no handle, a leaking faucet, and cockroaches in the bathroom. Individually minor, but the pattern points to deferred maintenance, not bad luck. Small but telling: in-room "coffee" is a tea bag, no microwave to reheat it once it cools, and no way to add cold creamer. In Hawaii, of all places, this is a strange thing to get wrong. What worked: the downstairs restaurant is genuinely good — skip the prawns, get the Ahi, cocktails are excellent (pricey, but that's Waikiki). Gym is small but functional, and they'll get you an iron/board on request. Pool has a nice, uncrowded vibe. Bottom line: I wouldn't return until there's visible investment in maintenance and valet staffing. The staff deserve better management support than they're currently getting.