Red Room Chronicles

I recently had a short but pleasant stay at the Marriott Courtyard Philadelphia Downtown. This is not your typical Courtyard since it is located in downtown Philadelphia. The building is a high rise in the pre-war architectural style. My king bed guest room had a high ceiling and crown moldings to compliment the features of the room.

One thing that wasn’t such a good experience was the parking. This particular Marriott is in the middle of a very busy circular traffic pattern. And the hotel is situated on a corner such that you have to pull up into a very short driveway to gain access to the front entrance. I pulled up to the front of the hotel and was greeted by a nice valet who offered to park the car. The valet service was great and welcome since I had been driving for hours. What wasn’t welcome was the $40 per day fee charge for parking the car.

I tend to do a bit of research before embarking on a trip to a new city. I’ll admit that I did very little research prior to this trip to Philadelphia. When heading to a big city it is definitely advisable to call the hotel and inquire about parking options in advance. Questions to ask include: Do you have parking at the hotel? How much does it? Are there other options nearby? What do the other options cost?

It would be nice though if each hotel that had valet parking also has a very visible sign that showed the daily rate as well as a lower cost (or free) option that is close by. This way when I pull up to the hotel I can think for a minute about whether or not I want to pay whatever daily fee they are charging for valet parking.

This tactic goes against the whole upsell nature of the hotel industry. So local hotels might see a drop in valet parking fees collected due to people thinking twice and selecting more reasonably priced options. But I bet it also means that more travelers will be satisfied. There will be fewer surprises at checkout. And more customers will feel good about the fact that the hotel was so upfront about the parking situation. After all, customer satisfaction is something that can’t always be measured in dollars.

It wouldn’t surprise me if such an open parking policy resulted in increased expenditures by travelers in other areas. Marriott has been known to be a leader on lodging issues (like the smoke free lodging policy) that matter to travelers. A more open policy towards parking, especially in city centers, would be another strong differentiator to set Marriott apart from other hotel brands.

I’m staying at the Courtyard Newark - University of Delaware this week.

The hotel is on the campus of the University of Delaware. They don’t have my favorite newspaper, The Wall Street Journal. The hotel is in the footprint of Cingular’s 3G network. The hotel serves complimentary coffee, which is set up just past the front desk.

Some people might consider those types of observations minutiae that really don’t make a big difference in the travel experience. Frequent business travelers would probably want to know all of those things though. Where do you go to find that info?

Sure you could come to this blog, but I could not possibly catalog a significant number of Marriott hotels on my travels alone. You would need the help of a community to get that kind of detailed feedback across a meaningful slice of the Marriott hotel brand.

Traditional travel sites like Trip Advisor and Yahoo! Travel allow users to rate hotels and write reviews. But even when you get down to the hotel level on those services the reviews are still categorized by the reviewer and not by the type of information.

I might only want to see comments about restaurants or about net connectivity. I might just be concerned about what’s in the surrounding area. If you’re a frequent traveler there may be other things that you care about.

I would want to read these sorts of observations from the people who actually stayed at the hotels, along with some commentary on the experience related to the particular category in question. I would also want to know a little bit about the person writing the observation.

Sounds like a wiki to me. A wiki or some sort of social network. A MySpace for a hotel chain? Every hotel chain should have one.

I know that hotel chains would worry about people just writing angry missives or posting general complaints. That sort of stuff can happen anytime you have an openly editable website. So how about inviting editors from amongst frequent traveler programs? Then slowly open up the editing and membership capabilities to more people. Something like that could be a perk and a privilege for those who patronize frequently and want to give back knowledge to others.

Some might say that such a venture is a risk because someone might see something about a hotel they don’t like and book elsewhere. That is true. But its also true that the most demanding customers are going to be more satisfied if their expectations are set properly before arrival.

After all, why should someone have to search all over the internet to get information that they can probably find if they just use one of the sites mentioned above or even Google?

Something like this would be a bear for any person to set up. But the Marriott hotel chain, with their significant resources and database of locations could set up the shell of the site with a comprehensive list of hotels and the placeholders for the categories. Their many customers could do the rest.

An interesting idea if I say so myself.

I stayed one very uneventful night at the Residence Inn White Plains two nights ago.

There are two notable things about this hotel. First, the rooms are huge. My one bedroom studio suite was about 800 square feet. Second, there’s easy access to Manhattan. The White Plains Metro North stop is a five minute walk away. From there its about a forty minute ride to Grand Central station.

My reason for staying there was the fact that I need to get to Manhattan for a 9AM meeting, but also had my car with me and didn’t want to fight traffic at rush hour. So I enjoyed the complimentary guest parking while I was at my meeting. Afterwards I hopped back on an off peak train to White Plains where I picked up my car and drove home to upstate NY. Mission accomplished!

I’m one of those people who stays in all different brands of Marriott hotels. My travel tends to be all over the place. I stay at high rise and low rise hotels depending on the location, cost and availability. I have a particular problem with the low rise brands (like Courtyard or Residence Inn) because there tends to be a lot of residual noise from people walking in rooms above.

I have had more than a couple of sleepless nights due to someone stomping above me causing me to wake up or to not be able to go to sleep. I solve this problem most of the time by calling a day ahead to ensure that my room is blocked on the top floor. I also have the “high floor” option checked off in my room preferences. Sometimes I’m not able to call ahead to ensure that the hotel staff knows that I really want a top floor room. Today was one of those days.

I was pretty sure that when I arrived that the room I was assigned would not be on the top floor. I was right. I was assigned a ground floor room. Most times when I don’t call I get assigned a room that’s not on the top floor. I always ask the staff at the hotel to change the room and about 50% of the time they are able to move me to the top floor room.

In this instance I was told that I could move to the second floor. I asked why I wasn’t blocked a top floor room and was told that my preference was noted. I was also told that the preference is not an official request and therefore cannot be guaranteed. I was told to call Marriott Rewards in order to make an official request. I was confused.

I accepted a second floor room. Then I called the Marriott Rewards hotline and Marriott customer service. Neither representative knew the difference between a preference and request. In fact, both reps were consistent in telling me that the ‘high floor’ request should have resulted in my room being blocked for the top floor.

So it has been my experience that even though floor location preference exists, it is rarely consulted when actually assigning rooms. So why even have the preference there at all? Strangely enough, after the two phone calls to try and figure out if I need to have something noted to my account I was moved to an available top floor studio room. Why the clerk at the desk wouldn’t move me there in the first place is beyond me.

The Ontario Airport Marriott is a nice hotel in a rather remote location about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. I stayed their last year for a conference and again this past weekend for the same conference. Check my review for my thoughts on the stay from last year.

My stay this year reminded me of some of the areas that greatly need improvement. Overall, the hotel is nice and the staff were very friendly. But service is quite uneven. Last year the bar and restaurant staff seemed ill prepared for the volume of traffic created by the conference. As I said in my initial review, “Service in the restaurant and bar was glacial.” This year it wasn’t too much better. My recollections stopped me from ordering food in the bar or even the restaurant. My observations in the bar showed that it’s still not recommended to order food while you’re hungry, because you’ll get a lot hungrier. I got smart and made sure my meals were taken offsite.

I had no choice but to eat out on Saturday night, as the restaurant was closed altogether due to a large reunion taking place practically in the lobby. I guess it’s better to close the restaurant then subject people to very slow service. I had a couple of other pet peeves about this particular visit.

The concierge lounge was shut down on Friday night when I could swear the sign said it would be open. Sure, you could gain access. But the place was eerily empty with no staff or amenities to speak of. Several conference attendees sat on a couch in disbelief and talked about the lack of service. That morning I had a wonderful breakfast in the same lounge so maybe it was a Friday night thing.

This particular Marriott also has a nice little kiosk for printing out your boarding pass. But they also charge $2.95 for three minutes on the machine that connects you to the internet. Why charge $2.95 just to print out a boarding pass. It seems to me that they’re just trying to pull every dollar from the customer rather than to just provide them with a helpful service. Luckily, the wired internet access in my room was speedy and reliable. So I used Continental Airlines’ system to fax my pass to the front desk.

I’m not saying that this is a bad hotel. The rooms are nice. The people are friendly. And they have a nice pool and small fitness center. But they still need to work on preparing for the volume of traffic that comes from the convention center across the street. They should consider dropping the ridiculous fee to print out a boarding pass.

Will I stay there again if the conference is held in Ontario next year? Probably. But I hope that I’ll be able to count on a little better service to make my stay that much more pleasant.

Shel Holtz just experienced slow internet access at a Marriott in New York City.

This is a big problem at some Marriott hotels. Whether you’re paying $12.95 or $9.95 a day, that’s still a lot of money for a 24 Hour period of access. So if people are paying a lot of money they should be getting superior service.

Cmon folks. Either bring the price down to a fair amount per day or make sure the speeds are up to par with what you’re charging for access.

Just checked in to the Residence Inn West Energy Corridor in the Houston area. Upon arrival the very cheery Front Desk Manager informed me that I had been upgraded from my studio room to a one bedroom. I thought, “Great”. I’m not one to turn down an upgrade.

Then my attitude turned when I was told that my room would be on the first floor. Now I have in my preferences that I like to stay on a high floor. What I really mean is that I don’t want to be on the ground floor. Usually I call ahead at the Marriott brands (like Courtyard, Residence Inn and Fairfield Inn) that have ground floor rooms. But why should I have to?

When I entered the room my earlier disappointment was confirmed. I get a full parking lot view and no chance to open the shades to enjoy some sunlight or air without a steady stream of travelers looking in at me like a caged animal. Sure I could ask for a new room, but I’m only here for one night.

As I’ve said a few times before, it would be very nice to be able to be able to pick my room, or at least my floor online without having to remember to call or work through a room change when I arrive.

When in Houston I do my best to try and stay at the JW Marriott near the Galleria. I think it’s one of the nicest hotels in Houston. I’ve stayed there on and off for years but the number one reason I keep going back is the gym.

The gym on the 5th floor of the hotel ranks up there with many commercial gyms I’ve been to. There are plenty of cardio machines including bikes, treadmills, stairclimbers and elliptical devices. This morning I saw that they recently added small LCD TVs to the front of each cardio machine so users can plug in headphones and watch television while they workout.

There’s a separate room that has a full set of new strength training machines and a rack of dumbells as well. You can do just about anything you want to in this well equipped area. There’s even a separate stretching area off of the main strength training room.

Other amenities of the gym include free mini bottles of water and plenty of towels. They also offer spare sets of headphones for guests who want to watch the TVs but don’t have their own.

As a frequent traveler I need a nice space to exercise to help keep myself in shape on the road. And a gym as nice as this one is reason enough for me to keep coming back to this hotel in the future.

Tags: Marriott, JW Marriott

No shortage of Marriott hotels in the Houston area, that’s for sure.

I just checked in to the JW Marriott Hotel at The Galleria. I’ve stayed here before, always enjoying the great service and the above average fitness center. One bonus I didn’t expect was the very nice flat panel TV in my room. I’ve heard that Marriott was outfitting their hotels with flat TVs but this is the first one I’ve seen.

Don’t take my word for it. Have a look for yourself.

One of the first things that I do when preparing to visit a new client is to stake the Marriott hotel locations in the region. Last fall I started doing some work with a new client in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania.

Unfortunately, my search for Marriott’s near Kennett Square didn’t turn up much. The two closest hotels are the Courtyard By Marriott Brandywine Valley (8 mi. away) and the Courtyard By Marriott Wilmington Downtown (11 mi. away).

Even though those distances might seem pretty close, they’re actually 25 to 35 minutes away from the client due to the fact that all of the roads have traffic lights. And one of the great conveniences I like to get out of business travel is to have a short commute in the morning.

The upshot of this is that I’ve been staying either at a local Hilton Garden Inn that’s 1 mile from the client or a Holiday Inn Express that’s a few miles further down the road. So I’m taking convenience over precious rewards points. It would be nice to see a Marriott pop up a bit closer to Kennett Square but that’s not likely to happen since there’s not much industry in the area and the big draw (the mushroom festival) is very seasonal.

As the end of the calendar year draws near I’ll be keeping an eye on my number of stays to insure I at least make it to gold status again. If it’s close I may just have to drive the extra few miles each way lest I fall into the dreaded “below gold” zone.

Tags: Marriott