Niagara Falls Marriott Fallsview Hotel & Spa — Hotel in Niagara Falls

I am very disappointed while writing this review as I have enjoyed my previous stays and hoped for the same experience. I am currently spending my last night here, ready to checkout in the morning. Hopefully no more issues occur.

I visited from August 5th - August 8th. The hotel is beautiful I must admit, Starbucks is a great bonus and the spa is amazing. Some staff can be extremely helpful and nice!

My first issue - I am a returning customer to this exact hotel location as well as many other Marriott locations. I went downstairs to ask the front desk lady for a later checkout time (never an issue in the past). I was told the latest they could accommodate was an extra hour. If I wanted any more time it would be an additional $75. I just paid almost $2000 for 3 nights in the hotel only and they’re telling me I must pay $75 extra dollars for an extra hour of sleep due to “availability”. If there’s nothing available, what does $75 dollars do to make it available? The lady I was dealing with was extremely ignorant and abrasive. I asked for the manager and she told me she was the highest person I could speak to. In fact mentioned she was the manager. If you are the manager, why does your badge say in training? When I pointed that out she told me she was wearing the wrong for badge. For whatever reason she recommended I just stay another night if I’m going to argue about $75 for an hour sleep. How does that make any sense? This all obviously started a disagreement. I asked for her name multiple times, which she denied giving me. I asked the employee beside her if she was obligated to give her name, she said yes.

After 10 minutes at least if arguing I was brought the actual manager. This was the afternoon of August 7th. He again told me there was nothing that could be done unless we paid additional $75 “due to availability”. $75 dollars more makes the room suddenly available for an extra hour? Strange. Also, you’re telling me - you’re willing to ruin my experience for the last $75 you will ever get from me, after spending $2000 on 3 nights? Potentially ruining the thousands of dollars I may spend on future visits? If the $75 is that important to you, I can just go to another hotel going forward and stay an extra amount of time at no additional cost. I can take my money elsewhere going forward if you are going to charge an arm and a leg for anything additional like an extra hour of sleep. The manager was very degrading and undermining, asking if I’ve ever ran a hotel before. He said to me if I go to “Guess” and ask for a $50 shirt, I cannot bargain that. That sir, is comparing apples to oranges. 2 completely different things. Also, I’m sure if I spent $2000 there, they would be willing to throw in a little extra regardless of where it is. After about 30 minutes of arguing and telling him I would be complaining, he credited me my extra hour as a “good will gesture” in his words. If it really was just the click of a button, why would you ruin my experience over the argument and not just allow me the extra hour as your “good will gesture” to begin with? This proved to me that it could have been done, and they just didn’t care to make it happen.

Second issue - key card would not unlock my door. I was just down at the front desk to get a detailed overview of my payments at the hotel as I was noticing strange charges on my account with no descriptions. They gave this to me without showing my identification. When I went down to ask for help with my door, I was told I needed my ID to prove I am staying in that room (which I told them my wallet was locked in the room). I was just speaking to her directly and she personally printed off all of my information and handed it to me directly. I still had it in my hands when coming down. Why proceed to ask me questions if you handed me all of my information without any ID needed previously? So you would have handed my name, home address and detailed description of payments to any customer, but not hand me a key card to my room after we just spoke? Seems...

Think carefully before going there and if you do be very careful which room you get (filthy dirty or spotlessly clean). Also, the hotel is very dated and shabby ... at CAD1792.08 for three nights it is not worth the money. It is far behind the quality of the other Marriott hotels we know. Giving only 1 overall star as the GM does not seem to know what Customer Care is.

We did not observe any major irregularities after late evening check-in. Only peculiar thing for such hotel was that after 21:30 we could not get any food (Starbucks was there though), the bar was closing at 22:30 and room service was available only until 23:00 ... hmm (I hope, I got the time right) The only thing we found "interesting" in our room 1211 was that if one sits in sofa trying to enjoy the view of the Horseshoe Fall, you are really looking directly into about 20cm wide horizontal window frame, successfully blocking the Niagara Falls view while sitting.

The next morning, excited to go and explore Niagara, we started to discover how disgustingly dirty the room was:

Bathroom sink: It did not drain properly, and we realized that there were some black pieces floating in the water. This led to removing the sink plug and discovery that the drain and sink plug have not seen proper cleaning for a looooong time (viz pic)

Shower: Mold in the door frame (viz pic)

Sofa in front of the window: The upholstery was falling apart and under the cushion was a thick layer of dust (do they have vacuum cleaners in the hotel?) (viz pic)

Window frame: The sliding door rail was black from all the accumulated dirt (viz pic)

Airconditioning: Dust on the AC grill (viz)

The flow of thought/emotions was disgust, not worth the money, fixable ... and with that we went to the reception to show them the pictures asking for the General Manager (GM) of the Hotel. And here, I believe, starts the bigger problem. A staff member came and asked if we wanted to speak to the GM and what's the problem. But she was not the GM. So, I informed her about the potential health hazards (bathroom/shower/AC) in the room and requested to speak to the GM, her reply was I can call you the assistant GM ... it was like we were not speaking the same language and irritating. She also refused to go with us to inspect the room. Realizing the GM is not going to meet with us, we requested that he call us on our mobile as we are going to enjoy the Falls (we left the number with the lady). To be sure, I also sent an email to the GM at about 11:00am EST. To our surprise at around 12:20pm we received an email informing us that the GM was looking to speak with us and that they tried to call our room, but we were not there. OK, why are they calling our room knowing that we will not be there, and they had our number to call us on? We came back to the hotel at around 5PM (I believe) and to that point nobody has contacted us. There was no note in our room. So, it looked like the Hotel did not really care and that was the most irritating thing - and here comes the proverb "A fish rots from the head down". We went down to the reception and spoke to a Duty Manager, a young, professional lady who understood our frustration and the fact that we were considering moving to another hotel (there were much cheaper options walking distance away). We were heading out for dinner she suggested that we pack our bags, she would try to find another room and discuss not charging us for the first night. One thing that shocked us was the staff can't dial international numbers, so she could not get hold of us unless she used her private phone - well done Marriott. At 8PM we got an SMS from her private mobile asking that we contact her re relocation. So, on arrival back, she informed that she could offer room 2124 which was perfect and worth the money. And yes, we were not charged for the first night.

Additional pictures are from the hotel lobby and again dirty...

Front desk staff made up their own rules regarding cancellation. No room has movie purchase option, or YouTube, Netflix access on TV.

On Christmas Day yesterday I checked into my room, reserved 5 minutes before at the front desk, hoping for movie and chill but the TV had only boring channels, fidgeting over 15 minutes with the 10 year old looking remote trying to figure out how to buy a movie or put YouTube or Netflix on without avail.

Laying in my bed bored thinking canceling the room and go somewhere else. Note that this happened within half hour of checking into the room. I tried to call front desk but nobody answered, then went downstairs waited in line for a good 15 minutes to speak to a staff, who told me they can cancel the room with management approval. I said I’ll go upstairs to think about it again because I’ve been tired from a 13 hours shift and 4 hour sleep last night and it will be troublesome to find another hotel. I went upstairs calling other hotels to check if their TV had movie buying options but reaching someone was so difficult I gave up and decided to cancel the room and walk over to other hotels in person.

When I came down to the lobby with my belongings waiting in line, it was within one hour of checking in. But I did not expect the line was huge with people having problems. Waited 15 minutes to speak to a another staff who told me I cannot cancel the room because I can only cancel within one hour of checking in and it’s been one hour and 10 minutes. I told her, the staff I spoke previously told me I can cancel the room and I came downstairs with my belongs ready to cancel within one hour of checking in and it was not my fault that there was a huge lineup making it impossible to speak to a staff in time. She appeared clueless so I said I’ll wait to speak to the previous staff I’ve spoken to.

So I waited in line for another 30 minutes for the staff I first spoke to, but she told me the same thing that I can not cancel after 1 hour of checking in. I stated the fact that I came downstairs within half hour of checking in, waiting in a 15 minute line to express my concern with her, that took 45 minutes, then came downstairs after 10 minutes with all my belongings ready to check out. That took 55 minutes in total. within the 1 hour window but I had to wait 15 more minutes to speak to a staff and another 30 minutes to speak with her.

Surprisingly she disregarded everything she told me before and said they can only do cancellations 3 days before check in date. Surprising surprising. How can I cancel 3 days before I made the reservation today 1.5 hour ago!?

She realized her argument doesn’t make sense and said “it’s bad for the business if you decided to cancel the room right after checking in just because you don’t like the room”. Word by word. Very unprofessional answer.

What about it’s bad for my business because I paid for a 4 star hotel with 1 star service and eventually not use it at all?!

She never got the manager for me.

I was exhausted from all this and walked away getting 0 refund of the room I never used.

They do not care about their customers, at least me who just want to watch movies of my choice and fall asleep.

How can a major 4 star hotel not have movie options. That was so so surprising to me. Even my $100 Airbnb have all Netflix, YouTube access on TV. I wouldn’t have minded buying 3 movies with $40 each like in other hotels. Very disappointing.

Staff changing policies from one minute to another is very...