I spend a lot of my time away from home in Marriott Hotels around the world. One thing I can never understand is their Internet access policy. I was in Washington DC 2 nights ago staying at one of the upper end Marriott’s (around $300 a night) I turned on my iPod to see if I could get on the Internet to check my mail. To my surprise the Internet cost was I believe $14.95 for a 24 hour period. What I have failed to understand is why is it when staying at say a Courtyard Marriott or a Residence Inn Marriott that the Internet is free, and the room is like $80 to $90 a night. But when I stay at the high end Marriott’s (Like JW Marriott in Washington DC, or London Park Lane in London, England) that they always charge for Internet access. It was nice to see that the Washington Marriott did havt LG HDTV’s in the room with actual HD TV service, but it would have been nice if the wireless Internet was free as well.
Fast Hotel Internet Service
Most of the time when you go to a hotel the internet service pretty much sucks, and if it is free it sucks even more. However this weekend I was greatly surprised by the service in the Residence Inn by Marriott in Charleston WV. In the room they had a DSL modem on the table. So I plugged in the laptop an to my surprise this was what speedtest.net showed:
I think this is the first time I had a ~3Meg connection in a hotel room. I was able to download stuff at over 250KB/sec from my house while there as well. So kudos to the Residence Inn for the awesome Internet connection.
Residence Inn San Diego Rancho Bernardo/Scripps Poway
I spent a week at the Residence Inn San Diego Rancho Bernardo/Scripps Poway. For the most part it was ok, with the exception of 2 nights… From the looks of the hotel it appears pretty new so I will give it a little slack. However on two different nights I ended up having water coming from the ceiling light in the kitchen and going every were. The first time it was after we had been outside shooting the breeze for a couple of hours and playing monopoly. I came in to hear a dripping sound and looked and the floor was soaked and water was coming from the ceiling light fixture. I tried calling the main desk, but no one answered. So I went down there and got Kyle (the night asst manager). He sent up the houseman who ended up getting soaked when he tried to move the plate of plastic that covers the light. So we went and got towels and then went back to the desk. In the meantime Kyle is trying to get ahold of the manager to find out what to do. They ended up calling in a maintenance person, but by the time the person got there (nearly 12:30AM) the water had stopped dripping so there was nothing they could do, they did however go to the room above me and wake them up to see if they could see any water up there.
So I ended up going to bed around 1:30 AM or so (and I was still on East Coast time so I was like 4:30 to me.) I came back the next night and they had put the light plate back in and painted over the wet spots on the ceiling. I had thought that they had fixed the problem, but low and behold, friday night it returned.
I had went to bed early on friday night because we had to be at the airport at 4AM saturday morning to fly back to the east coast. About 1130 or so, I woke up to the sound of water. Surely it couldn’t have happened a second time? Yup, this time it was worse, it was every where. I could even hear it going down in between the kitchen and bathroom walls and hitting the pipes. I called the front desk, and she said they could not do anything till the next morning, I then said, well I am leaving at 4 so I guess I will try and get some sleep. about 4 hours later I was up, having not slept hardly at all and we were on our way to the airport.
Overall the hotel was good, but they have some maintenace problems they seriously need to take care of. I had black mold growing on the ceiling in the bathroom, signs of water hitting the ceiling from above and setting there along with the high humidity of the bathroom. They really needed to take the entire 19 number rooms out of service and rip the ceilings out to find out where the problem actually is.
The first night I was there they at least called the Springhill Suites next door to see if they had any open rooms, which they didn’t. But other than that, nothing was done, other than throwing some towels on the floor and kitchen counter.
Here are some pictures of the ceiling with mold and the water dripping.
