The Union Station Nashville Yards, Autograph Collection — Attraction in Nashville-Davidson

As a child growing up in Nashville, I’d lovingly gaze out of my parents’ car windows, driving past the iconic Union Station on a trip downtown. I thought it was the most beautiful building I’d ever seen. Fast forward 40+ years, I’m booking a hotel room on a return to my hometown to attend a childhood friend’s surprise birthday party.||I was so excited to finally walk inside the gorgeous lobby and spend three nights there as a guest with my SoCal boyfriend on his first visit to Music City. ||Having learned that freight trains still travel through the station, I requested a quieter room on the opposite side of the hotel so we could get some sleep. The young woman at the front desk gave us a room over the tracks with a “view,” she said, which we visited with luggage in tow, making a U-turn back to the front desk to request the room that I asked for in the first place. Another agent was able to give us a room on the 5th floor which was what we had originally wanted. Not a great start after traveling all day from California, arriving late afternoon, hot and tired and in need of rest.||The 5th floor king room was nice with an 18’ ceiling and large windows looking out over Broadway and the train tracks. We could see the trains traveling north and south, but only heard the rumble of the engines below us, which was fine. The room was on the smaller side, with no place to put our luggage and no chair to sit in. You could only sit on the bed. The bathroom was very nice and modern, with a lighted makeup mirror and upscale toiletries.||That evening, while wandering around near the hotel, we discovered the Red Phone Booth speakeasy, which requires a secret number to be dialed into a rotary phone in order to access the private bar. We called the hotel for the number, and the front desk wanted us to come back to the hotel for them to give us the number. My boyfriend protested, asking for the front desk to give us the number over the phone as we were guests there (we had just checked in with the same agent about 3 hours prior), giving him his name and our room number so he could verify it. He reluctantly gave us the number and we were finally able to dial it and enter the speakeasy through a secret door, where we drank some very nice whiskey while relaxing on gorgeous leather sofas.||The next day, we forgot to ask for Housekeeping service (should we have to do this when we are paying $650+ a night?), so our room was not cleaned when we returned to the hotel around 3:15 pm, after an all-day trip to historic Franklin and Leiper’s Fork. We called the front desk and requested Housekeeping, and a sullen housekeeper came in about 15 minutes. My boyfriend asked her how long she needed, as we were going to the lobby to wait, and she rudely said, “Huh?” to him. He politely repeated himself, and she said about 10 minutes. When we returned to the room, the wastebaskets were not emptied; there was still a coffee cup ring on boyfriend’s bedside table; we were not given our two daily complimentary water bottles; and there was debris on the floor. Not an adequate service job for an alleged 4-5 star property.||On Saturday, it was raining, so we called the front desk to ask for an umbrella, as our flimsy travel umbrella had blown backwards in the wind and broken while caught out in a thunderstorm the night before. The agent asked for our room number and said he would hold the last umbrella they had for us. When we went to the front desk about 20 minutes later, not only did they not reserve it for us, but the agent told us that they don’t do that, who did we talk to, etc. There was only two of them, him and the other agent, but he didn’t bother to ask his colleague about it. Needless to say, we were not happy. The agent ended up comping us an umbrella from their small gift shop.||The bar is very nice, but the bartenders are inexperienced. One female bartender did not know what port wine was, and said they didn’t have it, but we could try a sweet Chardonnay, if we wanted. (I am not aware of any such thing; a Riesling, perhaps?). After asking someone else, she found the port and gave us two very large servings of it in red wine glasses. The following night, we ordered a lemon drop and a regular martini, and another inexperienced bartender gave us half a martini glass full of each beverage, but naturally charged us full price for the drinks. There’s also extra fees tacked on that we didn’t see anywhere else that added up to $10 to the bill.||Marriott, if you want to charge such high rates for rooms in this gorgeous historic hotel, please find better employees! The service was akin to a 2-3 star hotel, which is insulting given that you have rooms starting at $600 per night range, not including $60 a night for valet. This is an Autograph property! The valet department was excellent, btw, and obviously efficiently run by a different company than Marriott.||There are many nice hotels to visit in Nashville. We will not return...

I stayed at the this hotel from the march 7th-10th. It was one of the worsts stays. They were hosting a wedding in the lobby, the entire lobby was overtaken by this event and inconvenienced every single customer. This was not the worst part:

-after checking in on Friday, we decided to go to the bar for a drink and a light meal. The bartender did not make contact with us until 10 minutes after we had been sitting down at the bar, not only that but another couple came after us and they served them first, and then they decided to come to us. They gave us a free soft drink to try to make up for the inconvenience! -The room was oddly shaped and the TV was 24 feet away from the bed. It was extremely difficult to see or hear because the TV of course had a volume limit of 70. Furthermore, the TV was not the right size for that distance. for this level of luxury hotel, they had several things that were unacceptable for one, the shower had mold, please see attached picture. -after the room was serviced, they failed to leave toilet paper or refill the shower gel. -The water in the shower would never get hot enough. -Internet in the room was so bad that it took quite a few minutes for the Netflix titles to load. It was so bad that the closed caption would not load at times and you could only read certain sentences and much of the dialogue would not display on the TV. -At one point, my husband complained to the front desk and the person on duty at the front desk did not even apologize, did not even say anything to him, and proceeded to do whatever he was occupied with. -on the first night of our stay, the lobby was being cleared out of furniture. We were sitting at a sofa, and the furniture mover asked us to move to another area, we asked this person where we could sit? He pointed to another sofa on the other side of the room we proceeded to sit down, get our computer out and start working on some urgent business just to be moved three minutes later. -The night after the wedding was done, we were coming back from dinner, chairs and tables were being moved, The moving company almost ran me over and the men moving the chairs proceeding to say F with her. I would hope that at a hotel such as this one everyone would have been Trained to have a lookout and to have someone holding the door for them (to watch out for people coming in and out of the door specially their guests). Truly, a luxury hotel would not have allowed this. As a matter of fact, I feel like they should’ve exited through another door with all that furniture and not the main door. -The Best part of our stay was the valet service. I actually thought these people worked for the hotel and were not third-party vendors because as soon as we arrived, they ran to open not only the cars doors but even the hotel doors! They were extremely helpful and nice that I thought they must work for the hotel and this is truly gonna be a great hotel. However, They were a third-party company. I must compliment this valet service. They were amazing and the bellhop was extremely helpful And provided excellent...

Our stay here for our first visit to Nashville was okay, but I'm afraid we won't be back. Here's the rundown:

I'm a long time Marriott member, traveling 5-7 days a month, and we chose this hotel because of its uniqueness, proximity to town, and being part of the Autograph collection. The idea of the hotel is really great, and for its age, everything was in great shape. The room was super small given the cost, but nicely cared for and the shower was always hot (a big plus in old hotels!) It was in the best shape I've seen across many hotels this year. The hotel was close to town but far enough away from everything that you didn't get caught in too much Broadway craziness. When we arrived, the desk attendant, who was training someone, didn't seem happy to be there. She truly gave a sense that we were bothering her by asking questions. At this price point, and with it being an autograph hotel, I would have thought she might be more welcoming. We were immediately turned off, which is unfortunate. Our room wasn't ready, and we were early, so that's okay. They said they would put a rush on the cleaning and call when it was ready. That never happened. Past the normal check-in time, we finally went to the desk only to find the room had been ready for a while.

On our second evening, there was a wedding, which closed off the lobby and the bar, which was a little disappointing, but it was nice to see the wedding. They did a good job. Unfortunately, our hotel room was over the reception hall and we spent the rest of the night unable to even talk to each other in the room because of the noise. We contemplated trying to move, but that would have been even more of a hassle. The music was so loud, you could feel the bass through the bed. It was hugely frustrating, and for a hotel of this cost, should not have been the case. They shouldn't have booked any rooms over that reception,. When I called downstairs to ask when it would end, the operator was quite frustrated herself. She said it would be over soon, but that is all.

At checkout, we did reconfirm our complaint and the person working the desk was very apologetic and offered some options to make up for it, which was very nice and welcomed, but just didn't change how frustrated we were about it all, all the way back to the start of our check in. Nashville is a really great city, and I would recommend a visit. There are tons of hotels at better prices though. The idea of staying in the old train station sounds cool, but to be honest, there wasn't even anything anywhere we saw or heard that spoke to the history or stories, so it ended up just being another hotel that was expensive with a very small room. If you want to give it a try, please do. Our issues were mostly situational, so not something most travelers will have. It just gave us a bad impression and that's hard to drop.

I sincerely appreciate the efforts of the attendant when we checked out and she did her best to turn things around. I'll definitely stay loyal to Marriott, but won't choose this...