Overall a good stay
We spent 4 nights at this hotel during the International Quilt Festival. It is very well located, with a pleasant walk to the Convention Centre & other downtown sights (we found this area of downtown Houston safe to walk around day & night) . The staff were very friendly and tried hard, but it would be even better if the front desk staff were more informed about local things (food store, liquor store, transit). The breakfast & room were great. The adjacent (joined) Courtyard Inn has a bistro that sells light meals and drinks, plus the hotel is between Starbucks and McDonalds (but be warned that everything in the downtown closes by 6pm each day). Four blocks towards the Convention Centre is the Phoenician Market, a fabulous speciality food store that has a casual restaurant and also sells wine and a few blocks to the west is a conventional supermarket (Walgreens or Randalls). We did encounter one problem - due to the festival, we had booked the room 5 months prior using the CAA (Cdn Auto Assoc) discount available on the Marriott website. Upon arrival we were told that the hotel did not recognize CAA and that we would be subject to the regular walk-in rate, which was more than double our confirmed reservation rate. We pulled up the Marriott website which clearly shows that CAA is treated in the same manner as AAA and luckily had a hard copy of our reservation. After half an hour of on/off closed door discussions between the front desk staff and our insistence on being treated fairly, we were finally granted the confirmed rate and allowed to check in . Sadly this marred our impression of the hotel and made for a very stressful start to our trip.