Customer Service is the asset!
Recently, a friend and I stayed at the JW Marriott Thanksgiving weekend to see the 25th Anniversary Production of Les Miserables at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. I've typically been extremely pleased with the upper end properties of a hotel chain, so I took a chance for a great weekend at an exceptional rate. The service was top rate! Proably, the most efficient and courteous customer service I've encountered at a luxury hotel. The in-dining breakfast was served prompt and hot, with plenty of coffee refills. The hotel lounge area was also a delight. The bar staff, especially Lisa Marie, was tops. Ask Lisa for a house martini well shaken and/or a hotel old fashioned. Excellent! However, and there is always the inevitable however. I requested a handicapped accessible room with a roll in shower, with two beds. However the room 861 was on the other side of the floor from the elevators. Walking that distance with a walker was excruciating and unnecessary. I even asked to use the staff elevators which were only two doors down from my room, but was denied the privilege, stating "that elevator would take you places you wouldn't want to go...". The room was well appointed and with a nice decor, and an excellent accessible restroom, but the first night, the HVAC would not work and we were given the opportunity to change rooms in the middle of the night, but I deferred. Instead, we were given an electric fan to circulate the stale air. Alas, the HVAC was temporarily fixed the next morning, and the engineer told us it was only a fix until we checked out on Sunday and the room would be taken off line for repair. The temporary fix never worked, and the room alternated from cold, to hot, to no circulation at all. The environmental impact of the non-functioning HVAC made sleeping under heavy feather comforters extremely difficult. Basically, for a weekend trip to Chicago, we slept very little. After bringing this to attention to management, we were comped a free breakfast and given 10,000 Marriott points. A nice gesture, but it didn't compensate for a troubled two nights sleep. A that is the bottom line for a hotel....a comfortable room with a comfortable bed. The hotel did allow to keep our car in valet parking after check out, and made our journey to see Les Miz. The exciting, vibrant, production was one of the best I've ever seen, and it certainly created such a rush that the lack of sleep abated. Still, the top of the Marriott chain should provide comfortable rooms, comfortable beds, and an accessible room environment. Even at a great rate, it was a poor choice, and not one I'll make again. As I told the Service Manager, this is the JW Marriott, the top of the chain, to which she replied, "every luxury hotel has their off nights." So don't take a chance on an "off night" here, instead stay one street over at the Hampton Majestic. The more I stay at Marriott properties, the more convinced it is a hotel chain in decay.