This year it was the same. We stayed on a 3-night Hilton HHonors award and were given another hot and stuffy room. We went back to the front desk and asked for a better room that wasn't hot and stuffy. As the hotel was almost full that night, we were given the option of upgrading to the Executive Level for 50 Euros per night extra. As the room was "free", we decided this would be our best bet. Our new room was the same size, but furnished better and...it was hot and stuffy. After the flight Vienna via London and LAX, we were dog tired. My husband went to the Executive Lounge to get us a couple of cocktails to cool down and chill out. The person in the Executive Lounge wasn't an attendant, he was a "guard". He berated my husband and said that he would not allow him to take the drinks out of the Lounge. My husband was hot--physically and emotionally--and fixed two drinks and left the lounge anyway. As he left, the "guard" told him to make sure he brought the glasses back when he was finished. Well, the glasses were the same ones that were in our room above the mini-bar. As we left for dinner later that evening, we brought the two clean glasses from our mini-bar to the "guard" and told him we had washed them for him.

Now I would like to say that I don't like to be the ugly American when I travel, but we were paying for the privilege of being on that floor having cocktails gratis, and for this one time we wanted to take the drinks out of the lounge.

After that bad first encounter, we didn't have any trouble. The "guard" evidently had a couple of days off and subsequent Executive Lounge Staff told us it was okay if we wanted to take a drink to our room.

But back to the hot room. The entire hotel was like a sauna. All the guests in the Executive Lounge and most of the employees we spoke with were all complaining about the heat inside the hotel. It was cold outside, and turning on the a/c yielded nothing. So the only thing to do was to open a window and hope the birds didn't fly inside. We left the window open a bit at night, which also let in the traffic noise--sirens, car alarms, honking horns, busses. Despite being on the 17th floor, the noise was enough to disturb our sleep several times each night.

From conversations we had with guests and staff, this seems to be a yearly thing, so I would not stay here again during Winter/Spring. Lord only knows what Summer is like inside the hotel.