Review

This review covers a recent one night stay at Hilton Cardiff. This was a weekend family break in March 2022. Despite being relatively local to Cardiff it isn’t a city we have spent much time visiting, so we decided to book a short stay to see what it had to offer.

The Hotel

Hilton Cardiff is a large hotel located right in the centre of the city. Many of the rooms overlook Cardiff Castle and the hotel is a popular choice for people attending events at the Principality Stadium, which is just around the corner.

Hilton Cardiff has a leisure centre and gym, with a pool, sauna, jacuzzi and steam room. It also has a smart executive lounge on the top floor, which we had access to having booked a junior suite. The hotel has a secure car park, although this is located just around the corner in a separate building on Greyfriars Road, parking is charged at £23/night. It’s worth checking the location of the car park on Google maps before you arrive, as it isn’t clearly signposted and when we arrived the drop off area outside the entrance was completely full.

The Rooms

We booked a King Guest Room and a King Junior Suite for two adults and three children. The guest room was upgraded to a castle view via my Hilton Gold status and the suite meant we had access to the executive lounge. We booked at quite short notice and weren’t able to get connecting rooms, despite a bug on the website meaning these showed as an option right up until I clicked confirm (at which point I got an error message and called to discover they didn’t have any available).

During this period rooms were priced at 50,000 points or £165/night. Both rooms were well presented, clean and well maintained. The extra space in the suite was really handy and having the castle view was a nice extra.

Executive Lounge

The Executive Lounge was operating as normal, with no Covid restrictions. Tea and coffee is available all day, with a selection of cakes from 3-5 p.m. and snacks, wine and beer from 6-8 p.m.

The lounge is located on the 7th floor, has a fantastic view of the centre of Cardiff and is a well presented space. We made three short visits during our stay, including in the evening, and on each occasion it was well organised and not too busy.

Leisure Facilities

The hotel has a decent size pool on the 2nd floor, along with a sauna, steam room, jacuzzi and gym. This area was relatively busy when we visited. There is an odd expectation that you bring your own padlock in order to use the lockers, which might make sense for locals using the facilities regularly, but doesn’t make sense for hotel visitors and leads to lots of piles of belongings next to the pool itself.

The pool itself is a decent size, it’s a little dated but was clean and well maintained. It’s not quite got the modern, upmarket feel of the facilities in newer hotels such as Hilton Bournemouth, but it was fine for a swim. It was a little bit odd to see two people taking countless photos of themselves in the pool for social media as if they were in a 5 star spa though!

Breakfast

Breakfast is served in the restaurant, which at the time of staying was not yet re-open for dinner service. We were given complimentary breakfast for all 5 guests via my Hilton Gold status.

Whilst the food was great, our experience of breakfast was a little odd. We had booked for 9 a.m. and arriving just 5 minutes early at 8.55 a.m. seemed to annoy our greeter no end! After scolding us (we’d have happily waited the 5 minutes) he gestured us to a table and gave us no further welcome or information about how breakfast worked. We must have caught him at a bad time as a few minutes later I witnessed him provide someone with a much more appropriate welcome and a choice of table!

Full cooked and continental breakfast options were available. There was a good range of options and plenty of space for seating.

Summary

Overall this was a positive stay, the hotel is smart, clean, well maintained and well located. The executive lounge was particularly good. The leisure facilities might benefit from some modernisation and we’ll put the breakfast service down to an off moment!

Other Hilton hotel reviews you might be interested in:

Hilton St. George’s Park

Conrad Algarve

Hilton St. Anne’s Manor

Hilton Doubletree Southampton

Thank You

Thank you for reading this article. If you’ve found any of our posts helpful then why not subscribe to receive updates by email or follow on Facebook and Twitter?

You will also find all of our other recent posts via the homepage.

To get bonus points when you apply for an American Express card, use our referral links:

Amex Referral Link

BA Amex Refer-a-Friend 

Amex Nectar Credit Card Refer a Friend

Referral Codes

Earn extra bonuses with our referral codes including: Costa Coffee, Monese, Ola, American Express U, Hive, EE Referral, Curve Card, Airbnb, Sky TV, Green Network Energy, Boohoo.com, Oval Money, AO.com, Wish.com, Caffe Nero, Krispy Kreme BA Amex, Cleo, Quote Me Happy, Three, MusicMagpie and Animal Friends Pet Insurance Refer, TGI Fridays and WeSwap (find them all on our referral links page)