Shunde Marriott Hotel — Hotel in Foshan

Shunde. A suburban area in Foshan that could already be called its own city. Some say this city exists through its powerful culinary origins of Cantonese Cuisine. Some call it an industrial area. To me, it is like my second home. My family has origins here, and every year or so I make my return to Shunde annually from Shanghai. The Marriott Hotel in Shunde to some locals’ eyes is considered the best Shunde has to offer for the hundreds of thousands of guests that come there every year. Even coming to their All Day-Dining Restaurant for buffet dinner required some intense efforts to reserve for New Year’s Eve Dinner. We tried to host a 20-person New Year’s Eve Buffet at the end of 2018, but the reservation ended up being thrown away by a failed confirmation call. We were successful at holding it at the end of 2019.||With other hotels in Daliang, we have been to that did a great job, I came to this hotel because I received a complimentary new Gold Marriott Bonvoy Membership after earning the United Airlines Gold MileagePlus Card. I wanted to test run the membership, therefore me and my friend Kevin stayed at this hotel from July 15th to the 17th. This is my first time using the Gold Card at a Marriott International Property. This is my first time staying in the hotel as well. I was rather excited to try this hotel out.||I booked the Guest Room Twin Room Non-Smoking with a City View, which was upgraded to the Lake View Room. The cost was 800 RMB per night without breakfast. We arrived in the afternoon of July 15th and were checked in by Robben Liu. He got our check-in done swiftly and initially assigned us to Room 2320.||The Guest Room of the Marriott Shunde Hotel is a 40SQM room space, which I should give the hotel credit for giving us the exact room space as advertised. Some hotels do not do that, so huge credit to the marketing team. The twin room has two single beds with some nice pillows, linens, and blankets for your comfort. There is a separable sofa chair that splits into two halves. There is a desk with plenty of workspace for any computer or booklet. Power outlets are plenty around this hotel room space, although some USB ports are to be in order, to keep the hotel modern in its future renovation. The bathroom has a toilet room, separate shower and bathtub, vanity sink, and soap amenities from the soap company “this works”. The view is exceptionally amazing with the entire coverage of Shunfeng Mountain and its lake in direct sight. As a Gold Bonvoy Marriott Member, I was given some free water and a plate of handheld fruit as my amenity.||This could have been a perfect room to stay in. However, when it comes to the design, maintenance on the housekeeping front is a huge issue. I was rather left dissatisfied with the overall cleaning of my room. Many surfaces were simply not wiped down properly. We found water stains on the mirror ledge, white stains on the window metal frames, dust on the desk, and food crumbs on the spoon holder on the coffee table. We called the service center and they sent Robben up to 2320 to have me explain to him the issue. Robben understood the issues that were put forth, and he already got a key even before I asked for the room next door as a possible replacement. I looked at the replacement room 2322 before accepting it, there were crumbs found on the windowsill, which indicated to me that the hotel’s housekeeping hasn’t been doing a thorough job at cleaning the rooms and suites of this hotel.||Robben got us to rest in the original room whilst he got us another room cleaned up. He gave us a Guest Room on the Executive Floor, in which we were assigned to 2622. Given that the floor would have been used for Executive Rooms, note to those wanting an upgraded room will not find it in the Executive Room category. The only benefit of the Executive Room would be the Lounge Access and a higher floor, that is it. To my initial satisfaction, I found the room to be a step cleaner than the original room, therefore I accepted this one. Unfortunately, I did not check the toilet, in which the corner marble tiles of the floor were filled with dust and hair that would have been there for at least months. I got Robben to reclean the bathroom so that we won’t have to move rooms again. We do have to give a lot of credit to Robben, I imagine it wasn’t easy for him to cope with repeated problems he must address that are at no fault of his own.||We did not have any breakfast at the hotel, nor had any food items from the hotel beside the fruit and water. We did ask for some masks and extra towels, which were promptly delivered to us. Bear in mind you can use the Marriott Bonvoy APP to request certain items to be delivered to your room like bedding, towels, and other items. We managed to get out at 2 PM late checkout granted with a call to the front desk, which we appreciate. Even before we could even reach the desk for our checkout, Max Liu checked us out in the elevator for us to expedite our departure when he got in the elevator with us from another floor.||I do wish that much care would have taken place in terms of the response to the lack of consistency in the cleaning of rooms. I could not fathom how dirty some rooms could be after seeing 3 rooms in a row with poor cleaning maintenance.||Overall, the hotel experience that I just was disappointing given the context of what my perception of the hotel was like before I even stayed there all these years. To me, it was like a dream hotel I wanted to go to because of how it stood out in the skyline from the view outside my grandfather’s resting point Baolin Temple. Now I look from his gravesite to see how horrifying it must be to see a hotel that would’ve been named the best hotel in Shunde become one of the underwhelming ones for me. I wish the upper management will look into this cleaning crisis and find a solution to make it become the best hotel in Shunde again...

If I could give zero stars, I would be delighted to do so. Overall, my recent (Feb. 7-9) two-night stay at the Shunde Marriott Hotel was my most terrible hotel experience ever. The nightmare started with being trapped in one of the elevators for about half an hour, on the way to the hotel room right after check in. Making it much frustrating was my three-year old was in the elevator with me, and he was utterly terrified by being struck in the elevator. The management never explained why this could happen and why it took about half an hour for the rescue team to arrive. Their gesture of apology was no more than offering me a free lunch buffet, which ironically, as it turned out later, was not entirely free. My son is traumatized by the incident and fearful of elevators in general, even three days after the trip. Adding to the nightmare was the dysfunctional air conditioning in our hotel room. Despite I tried setting the digital thermometer at various degrees between 16-22 Celsius, the room was constantly at 25-29 degrees and felt like a sauna room due to effect of humidity. We brought the problem to the attention of the front desk, and the two technicians they sent to fix the problem were no help at all. In the morning of the second day of our stay, I called the front desk again about the issue. They offered to bring a cool air blower to the room. I agreed. The floor maid shortly came to the door, only to ask if I could wait until her lunch time in the basement so that she could be spared an extra trip to the basement to fetch the blower. I was shocked by this unprofessionalism. Only after insisting on having the blower asap were I able to have it in the room in the morning. There were a couple other similar unpleasant incidents during the stay, which I will skip here. I don't want to mention the terrible food from the restaurant. Lastly, three days after the stay, I found they charged 187 RMB on my credit card for the 117 RMB prepaid breakfast buffet. What was the point of prepaying at a discount rate if they nevertheless would charge the full amount? Were they trying to make up for the “free”...

Be warned! Hotel has this inexplicable policy of switching off the air-conditioner master compressor on cold days; leaving ALL rooms an UNBEARABLY HOT 26-27 degrees celsius.

Problem with this policy is that I could not open my windows to regulate the room temperature so quite why they see the need to off the A/C compressor on cold days is beyond me. It forces customers to accept an incredibly hot room with no recourse. That is completely unacceptable.

Staff could not do anything and only gave very logically weak and dogmatic replies when asked. They could not even define what a cold day entails and if this was part of Marriott Standard Operating Procedures (it exists yes?)

To add insult to injury, shower was choked when I used it. Does room keeping even bother to check before handing over the room?

Biggest mistake in 2021 was to hold a team meeting in this hotel, forcing me to stay the 2 full days without being able to extricate myself.

2022 resolution - never again for me, my team or my close business associates.

This hotel should be avoided at all costs...