Rome Marriott Park Hotel — Hotel in Rome

I just wanted to take some time to write about my resent stay at Rome Marriott Park Hotel. In short: the hotel should not be using the Marriott brand.

We decided to stay at the hotel given we had a few meetings at the Airport. Given our Loyalty to Marriott (Ambassador and spouse Titanium Elite) we chose this hotel.

Check-in: 1- They always have very long lines with only one or two people working at any given time. Normally, as Elite members, you can use a dedicated Elite line. At this hotel, the Elite line is there but no one works it. So not only you stay there waiting for nothing, but on top no one tells you that is closed. So you always have to wait 20-30 minutes to talk to them.

Rooms: 1- When I went to take a shower there was no soap. When I asked housekeeping, I was told that the hotel didn’t have any more of the regular shower gel, so they gave me a random brandless little bottle. Needless to say that getting in the shower and not having shower gel/soap (even though the bottle is there but just empty) is something I have never experienced in a Marriott. 2- Next day, when I went to take a shower, there was no towel. Housekeeping had taken my used towel, but did not leave a new one. All I can say is that it was not a fun experience either. 3- They did not replenish the water, the coffee or the cream. When I asked housekeeping, they said they only had the coffee. No water or cream to replenish. 4- Half the accessories in the bathroom were broken. 5- The sink did not drain.

Restaurant/Lounge: 1- The breakfast experience wasn’t great. All the food served was subpar. 2- The lounge was basically empty. The food there was worse than at the restaurant. 3- The key did not work to access the lounge.

Gym: 1- Machines are old and are not maintained. 2- Half the gym machines do not work or are broken. 3- Water machine was empty. 4- No one showed up ever to replace used towels. By the time I got there at 8:00 am, there were no fresh towels. 5- Air conditioning wasn’t working, so they simply opened the windows of a very hot Roman day.

App: 1- We sent a few messages through the Marriott app, not once did anybody answer in the full 2 days we were there.

Management: 1- Upon check out, I simply wanted to talk to the manager to explain all these points and try to understand why all this is happening at a Marriott property. First, they tried to stop me from speaking to the manager. Then, when I insisted, they went to talk to him and his response was “I’m busy.” Not a “I’ll be there in 30 minutes” or “can you please ask him for his cellphone number and I’ll call him back” or anything. Simply an “I’m busy”. After I explained to the front desk all these points, they finally said they would go ask him to talk to me. They came back and said he would be right out. After 30 minutes of patiently waiting, I simply left. He wasn’t coming.

Marriott really needs to audit this hotel and really assess if the hotel is worthy of the Marriott brand.

I can tell you right...

I am not one to write a review, especially a negative one, but I have to say I was extremely disappointed in the service at this hotel. The hotel itself is beautiful and exactly what we were looking for for our honeymoon. However, after a long day of traveling, we arrive to check in at the hotel around 6 pm to find that their servers were down to create room keys. We stood in line for about 30 minutes and only heard the issues through other customers in front of us who had been waiting a very long time. We thought it was strange that no hotel staff made an announcement about the IT issue, apologize for the wait, and that they were working on it. Knowing that the issue may take a while to fix, and rather then wait in line the whole time, we opted to eat dinner at the hotel restaurant. We weren't too upset by this because we were planning on eating there anyway. But we had hoped we could take our luggage to our room, shower, and change out of our travel clothes first. After a nice meal, that we spent $50 on, we went back to the check in desk to find that they were still struggling through the same IT issues. We waited in line for another 45 minutes or more, still no explanation or apology from the hotel staff. Finally when we made it up to the desk, the staff never apologized for the very long wait. We checked in and asked if breakfast was included. When the woman at the desk told us that it was not included, we asked if they would comp the breakfast to make up for the inconvenience of the 3 hour wait at this point. She then proceeded to disagree that we had not been waiting 3 hours. We arrived at 6 and at this point it was 9, but even still, what does it matter, people had been waiting and you would think a nice hotel like this would do something to make up for the huge inconvenience. It's not like people could leave and go to another hotel. They had all already booked and paid for their rooms online so we were all forced to wait. She said she would ask but could not guarantee the free breakfast. She went in the back and came back out saying they could give us one drink each at the bar. I told her I was pregnant so I couldn't even drink. She responded by saying I could have a coke! A free coke to make up for a 3 hour wait after a long day of travel and no explanation or apology from the hotel whatsoever. She said we could could talk to her manager in the morning. I asked to speak to someone right then. She said there were no managers there which I highly doubted. We ended up just going up to our rooms without further complaints as to not make the customers waiting behind us in line wait any longer. Another frustrating note to add to the inconvenience, they only had one elevator working that would take us to the floor we needed. Two were broken and the only other working elevator went to random floor numbers like 1, 3, and 6, but we needed room 5. Very disappointed how the whole thing was handled. I would have expected much better from a nice...

TLDR: Incredibly poor service, rooms in disrepair, small amenities do not make up for these or the fact it is not close to airport or central Rome.

PROS: Room service and breakfast service were great, I did very much appreciate that part of the stay Lounge is adequate although somewhat dated The pool is a very nice touch, our kids especially enjoyed it

CONS: General service was AWFUL and I cannot understate this enough. Right from check-in we knew it would be a bad experience. The check-in staff didn't greet us with a hello, and when we called that out she addressed us sarcastically the rest of the interaction. We knew we were checking in early, and when we asked when a room could be available she simply said "come back later". Only when I messaged someone via the app did we get our room. Marriott status was completely disregarded (but even then, just a basic level of politeness for ALL guests isn't too hard to ask??)

Rooms were pretty shabby an in a state of disrepair. My FIL's room had visible water damage in one corner of the room. The balcony was huge but COVERED in bird droppings. Our room, the hairdryer didn't work and the drain for the bathtub/shower got stuck, so we were stuck showering in 20cm of standing water (my FIL managed to get maintenance to his room for the balcony, for our room and the bathtub, they kept saying Maintenance would come but never showed up)

Requests for additional towels and blankets for the kids went unanswered. Tried the front desk and requesting via the app, both were ignored

Pool was great, but the snack bar was a ripoff. My brother-in-law purchased something from the bar that should have been 15 Euros. The cashier said it would be 18 Euros. When he pointed out the discrepancy between the posted price and what she had said, she said "Ok ok, 16 Euros then". Which was still more than what was posted

My plan was to highlight these issues when I checked out. When the receptionist asked how our stay was, I started saying "To be honest with you it was quite bad...", but she immediately turned to another colleague to speak with them and ignored me completely. By this point, my energy was completely drained and we just wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.

I have Platinum status with Marriott and my FIL has Titanium, but even despite that we didn't get the service anywhere close to what we expect. Again though, having status should not be a prerequisite to getting a basic level of service and during this stay the property and staff consistently failed at this and were unapologetic about it.

Overall, given that this isn't particularly close to the airport (30-60 Euros for a cab depending on size of the group), or close to central Rome (up to an hour by cab depending on traffic, longer via public transit) I would recommend finding a different property...