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Hotels in San Diego: Inside the Vice President’s Suite at the Hilton Gaslamp Quarter
- Alyssa
- Jun 9
- 11 min read
On a spur-of-the-moment trip to San Diego to see the blue whales migrating, we needed a place to stay, and we had only about a day's notice to book a hotel! We wanted to be downtown for easy access to restaurants, and the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter put us right where we wanted to be. It's located in the heart of the Gaslamp District and is conveniently located near dozens of restaurants and bars. However, during our stay, there was a huge business convention, and room rates were high! We did not want to pay $500 plus a night and decided to book our room with hotel points instead. We cashed in 130,000 Hilton Honors points for a two-night stay and booked a standard king room.
Getting to The Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter Hotel:
The Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter Hotel is just under 4 miles from the San Diego International Airport, and only about a ten-minute drive. There are a few transportation options available to get to the hotel from the airport like; ride-share, taxi, rental cars, and public transit.
Ride-share apps like Uber and Lyft are readily available in the area, along with taxis. The cost for a ride-share varies between $25-$45 depending on the time of day and traffic. While this may seem steep, keep in mind that most hotels (including The Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter) charge each night for parking. Hotels closer to the center of the city will often only provide valet services, which will also drive up the cost of parking. Booking a taxi is close to the same price as ride-share, so use whichever you are more comfortable with. You can book ahead of time with San Diego Yellow Cab on their website here.
Rental cars a easy to come by, with over ten rental companies available at the airport. The average price for one week with a rental car is about $350-$450 depending on the company and car size. Keep in mind if you choose to rent a car to add parking fees into your budget, parking downtown is often valet only and adds up quickly!
There is also public transportation that can get you near the hotel. The city bus transit runs to and from the Airport and Downtown San Diego via Route 992. It stops at Terminals 1 and 2 and operates between 5:00 a.m. and midnight. The bus runs every 15 minutes on weekdays and every 30 minutes on weekends and holidays. A one way ride costs $2.50 per person. You can read more about public transit on the MTS website.
For this trip we drove ourselves so luckily we did not have to pay rental car fees or pay for a ride-share while in San Diego.
Check-in:
Our first interaction with the hotel was with the valet service. We drove our car down from San Francisco and since the hotel does not offer self-parking, so we had to use valet. There is a small stand outside the front of the hotel and a separate lane for you to pull in off of the street so you are not blocking traffic. The standard check-in time for The Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter is 4:00 PM, however, we got there around 9:30 PM. We did not see anyone in the valet booth, and waited in our car for a few minutes and still did not see anyone. Eventually, someone appeared, but they still did not come over to us. They stopped to pet a dog (understandable, the dog was cute and wearing a sweater). Elijah had to get out of the car and flag the man down, so we could finally get service. Parking was not included in our room rate, and we paid $65 per night, $130 in total for parking.
Finding the entrance was a little confusing since multiple doors were locked! When we finally found an open door we made our way inside to the lobby. There is a small bar/restaurant in the lobby, a bathroom, an atm, a small snack bar, and a check-in desk. The staff at check-in were super friendly and were excited to tell us that we had been upgraded to the vice president's suite!
They explained to us how to get there, and let us know that the waters inside the room were free. They also explained that we each got $15 per person per day to use either at the bar/restaurant in the lobby or at the small snack stand. As we got our keys they made sure to tell us that the credit does not roll over and since it was getting late in the day, we should use it before the night ended! We appreciated how attentive and helpful they were!
Room Details:
We booked our two-night stay completely with Hilton Honors Points and paid zero dollars in cash. We booked a standard king room and paid 130,000 for two nights at the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter. We got a free upgrade from a basic room to the vice president's suite, and it did not cost us any more points. However, we did have to pay a $200 refundable incidental deposit at check-in.
Our room was a little confusing to get to, and even with directions from the check-in staff we managed to get turned around for a few minutes. The room was in a different building from the main hotel separated by an outdoor terrace. To get there we had to go up a floor in the main building, walk across the outdoor terrace, and then find the next elevator to go to our room's floor. We admittedly did not listen very well to the instructions as we checked in, but we did manage to find our room after discovering the second set of elevators tucked away behind a wall.
We had no idea what to expect when we got to our room, neither of us had ever stayed in a room like this before! Our minds were blown when we opened the door to an expansive hallway lined with art! The hallway was the size of the room we had originally booked!
We made our way inside and started to explore. The room was huge!! There was a half bath just off the entrance hallway, with a small sink and toilet.
Behind the half bath was an enormous dining room, with an executive-size table ready for at least eight people. The dining room was surrounded by huge floor-to-ceiling windows. There were views of the convention center, bridge, and Gaslamp Quarter. Just off the dining room was a small wet bar and espresso station packed full of water, Nespresso pods, cream, and sugar.
The room was so large it took us a long time to take it in! We made our way from the dining room to the living room, which like the rest of the suite was enormous! A seating area surrounded the TV with a couch, two chairs, and a coffee table. On the coffee table were three art books. Hanging from the ceiling, above the coffee table was an Alexander Calder-style metal mobile art piece. We found it interesting to look at, and felt it tied the arty vibe of the room together! The living room had many floor-to-ceiling windows and when opened allowed a lot of natural light to fill the room.
The bedroom had its own set of double doors and was split off from the living room. The bedroom was bigger than an average hotel room and had a large panoramic window overlooking the pool and convention center. The bedroom had typical items in a normal hotel room like a bed, TV, dresser, closet with a safe and iron, and nightstands on either side of the bed.
There was an attached bathroom in the bedroom, and it had a separate toilet room, a deep soaking tub with views of the city, and a separate standing shower. The second we saw the bathtub we were both excited! We instantly started planning on taking a nice soak. The tub had a frosted glass window facing the city, and a small portion was left unfrosted allowing for you to look out into the city. This was both exciting and horrifying to us! We were glad to be able to relax, and take in the city, but worried the city (or other hotel guests) might be looking back at us!!
While trying to see if the window was a peep show for pool guests below, we discovered that we also had a patio attached to our room. We did not know it existed because it was hidden behind two layers of curtains! To get out there you had to walk through them. Even with the blinds open it was hard to get out there! The patio was pretty simple with just two small chairs and a small table between them. Most of the space was unused, but the view of the convention center, and train tracks were nice.
The longer we stayed in the room we did notice a few things that we thought were odd and inconvenient. Despite the room being large, it did have some wear and tear, and some problems with functionality, and at times it felt like the design was put higher than the guest experience.
The half bath near the entrance of the hotel room was a little dirty when we first arrived. There was a hair on the toilet seat, and the base had some red/brown gunk on it. The sink in this bathroom was one of the major design flaws of the room! The spout of the sink sat maybe an inch to two inches away from the bowl of the sink, making it nearly impossible to wash your hands! When you tried your hands were touching the spout and the sink at the same time, sort of wedged in between the two!
Another oddity of the room came from the curtains, they were all on a motorized track with control panels on the walls, besides the dining room. We could not find a control panel for the curtains in the dining room, and we searched everywhere!! We tried to manually open them, but they put up a fight and we did not want to keep pulling if they were supposed to be motorized! We also noticed that the control panel for the curtains in the living room would only work if a random, unmarked, light switch was turned on. We thought they were broken until we turned all the lights on, and flipped the switch. There was no sign, or indication that the switch went to the control panel, and we thought it was for one of the lamps.
In the bedroom, the TV was on the far left side of the room on the dresser, and the bed was towards the center of the room. This made it hard to see the TV from the bed, especially since the TV did not swivel or move. The TV also did not have any channel information available, so we were blinding flicking through channels. There were no outlets on the wall near the bed, but on one side there was an alarm clock with a few outlets. The other bedside table however had no outlets and we had to plug one of our phones in across the room. We thought it was odd for such a common convenience most hotel rooms have to be missing in such an expensive room!
We already discussed some of our concerns with the bathroom, specifically our worry that people could see in while we were in the bathtub and the shower. We had another slight problem while trying to use the bathtub. The spout for the bath ran from the floor and was separate from the bathtub. We could not figure out how to get the water to run from the handheld wand! We had to find the manufacturer's website of the spout online, only to find it to be a super common question with that model!
There is a small ring on the base of the spout that you pull down, and it will switch the water to the wand. There was no indication of that, and even after staring at it for over twenty minutes, we could not figure that out. If you were in the bath, you would not be able to reach the ring and would have to climb out of the tub to move the ring. We thought it was an odd and inconvenient design choice! Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash were provided for the shower, but they were the big bottles that were attached to the wall so there was no way to use them in the tub!
Extra Benefits:
As Hilton Honors members we received $15 per day, per person to use at the hotel bar/restaurant or snack bar. The money did not roll over to the next day, and had to be used by midnight! We got a few snacks and drinks each day from the small snack bar, and they even had a few cute little souvenirs like a teddy bear and a water bottle with the hotel branding on it.
Property:
The property is located in the heart of the Gaslamp District and puts you near bars, restaurants, and lounges. There is an outdoor terrace at the property with direct access to the street, and once outside you are steps away from multiple restaurants. The hotel's terrace is furnished with outdoor furniture and is surrounded by murals, artwork, and a giant chessboard. The pool is also on the terrace, but it is sectioned off into its area.
There is a small restaurant and bar in the lobby of the hotel, and they offer a selection of breakfast foods in the morning, and light bites in the afternoon/evening along with their drinks menu.
An interesting perk of the hotel was easy messaging with the front desk via text message. Before our arrival, we got a text from the hotel asking what our expected arrival time was, and they followed up with us about our stay while we were there.
Check out:
The check-out time at the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter is 11:00 AM. The checkout process was easy since we had access to front desk staff via text. They reached out the morning of our checkout asking us to send them our email when we were ready to check out and to leave the keys inside the room. We sent them a text on our way out, and seconds later we got an email with our final receipt for our stay! Getting our car from the valet was just as simple, all we had to do was scan the QR code on the valet ticket, and it auto-prompted a text message to the valet. All we had to do was click send and our car was waiting for us by the time we got out front.
Summary:
For this stay, we only paid for the valet service, which ran us $130 in total, or $65 per night. The rest was paid for using Hilton Honors Points, and we cashed in 130,000 for a two-night stay at the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter. We originally booked a standard king room, but upon our arrival got upgraded to the vice president’s suite! We had never been inside a hotel room so large, and were excited to explore!
There was a massive dining room, living room, and bedroom, along with one and a half baths. The room had great views of the city, convention center, and even the bridge, and we enjoyed sitting back and watching the busy city below. However, there were a few inefficient design choices like the unusable sink in the half bath, the brain teaser bath wand in the tub, secret light switches to control the curtains, and the fear of flashing the city below while in the shower and bathtub! Despite the few issues with usability in the room, we were extremely excited to stay in this massive suite and enjoyed ourselves immensely! The room is currently not listed on the hotel's website, so we do not know how much it would cost out of pocket per night, but it is safe to assume that if you book this room, you can expect to pay upwards of $1,000 per night!
Do you think a stay in the vice president’s suite at the Hilton San Diego Gaslamp Quarter is worth your wallet? Let us know below!!
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