Philadelphia Marriott Old City

BEWARE OF CONSTRUCTION & NOISE (TL:DR at the end) Lifetime Platinum Elite and current Titanium member of Marriott. We stayed at this Marriott last year and it was an absolute delight of an experience. This is why we chose to stay at this property recently. Unfortunately if was not the same experience.

We reserved a room and were pleasantly surprised when we were notified that we were upgraded. Unfortunately that is where the problem starts. We were upgraded to a corner room closest to the interstate on the highest floor. When we looked out the window we were staring straight into a massive construction site with four large cranes. The first night was great, no complaints. Unfortunately the second night (a Saturday night), we came back to the room around 6PM and were shocked. The construction site was chaos and we were so close to the action we could hear workers yelling and every type of noise imaginable.

We went to the front desk and asked them how long construction usually goes on. They said it would stop at 9PM, which was fine for us. We had a very early morning the next morning (5AM wake up) but were fine being out of the hotel until 9. Unfortunately when we got back to the room close to 10PM, the chaos was still going strong. Additionally, three gigantic spotlights were pointed straight into our room - making the room feel like daylight even with the curtains closed. We waited until 11:45PM but the chaos and lights remained strong.

I called the front desk and told them the situation and asked if we could be reassigned to a different room. The front desk told me it's not the hotel's fault construction continued and was very passive-aggressive in response to my request. The front desk told me he would call back. 45 minutes later I received a call back and was told there was only one room we could move to. So at 1AM in the morning we moved all our belongings across the hotel and away from the spotlights. Unfortunately the room we moved into had a broken A/C system and curtains which only went down the window a quarter of the way.

I tried calling the front desk 3 times and no one picked up. So we resigned ourselves to sleeping in the hot room with streetlights glaring into the window because of the broken curtains. We checked out the next morning and I mentioned to the front desk the problems with the room and the front desk didn't even offer an apology. Just a "thanks for telling us, here's your receipt. I think for our next trip to Philadelphia, we will find a different property.

Ironically, I had hoped the hotel would send a guest satisfaction survey so I could privately share my experience with the hotel but never got one. Hopefully this review helps another person not have the same experience.

TL:DR: Major construction right next to the hotel. If you have to stay, ask for a room on the other side. If you get stuck next to the construction - the hotel staff aren't very sympathetic. Hotel has no warning on their website.