TownePlace Suites by Marriott Thousand Oaks Agoura Hills — Hotel in Agoura Hills

First things first, this is a gorgeous hotel, inside and out. The price felt high, but that's the LA area for you. It was definitely competitive (i.e. better) than anything else we could find to accommodate 5 people. Breakfast was really good and had a fair amount of variety.

But that's where it starts to fall apart just a little bit. Based on the map on the back of our door, this hotel has 4 larger suites per floor (3 floors), and we got the 2-bedroom suite with sofa bed, since we were traveling with our 3 children. Our reservation was clearly made for 5 people, and the room clearly states that it sleeps up to 5. However, the room isn't really MADE for 5. There is a small table with 4 chairs around it for eating. There is only a small couch in the main room that seats 2, maybe 3. Other than the 2 beds in the bedrooms, there was nowhere else to sit down in the suite. It wasn't exactly conducive to a family of 5 hanging out together. Furthermore, the room has a pretty nice kitchenette, but had 3 of each type of silverware and 4 mugs. If a room is for 5 people, you'd expect at least 5 seats, 5 mugs/glasses, 5 forks, etc. I will say that this seems to be a general Marriott problem that I've seen for years, but little in this world is made for a family of 5, and Marriott seems ok with that. On top of that, we had no bedding in the room for the sofa bed, and had to ask twice before we got some.

I'm sure this is probably at least somewhat a California thing, but when we would leave the room, the air would eventually shut off. It was in the 90s the week we stayed, so when we'd get back to the room, it'd be pretty warm. We'd have to wait a while for it to cool down.

Due to one of my children having an allergy, I'd read online about how a lot of Marriott properties were offering gluten-free breakfast options this morning. I had a perhaps misguided belief that in California, that would be even more prevalent. I asked at the front desk when we checked in, and got a "not sure" kind of answer. We asked the next morning at breakfast, and the guy working in the breakfast room said he would check, but that he was sure that the prepackaged blueberry muffins were gluten free. We picked one up and read the ingredients and it was most definitely NOT gluten free. When he came back, he told us that the plain bagels were gluten free, which we were HIGHLY skeptical of. You can usually tell gluten-free items by the way they look, and these didn't look gluten-free. I also doubt that they'd make one of the mainstays of their breakfast gluten free. Anyway, we stuck with things that we knew would be safe, such as fruit and certain cereals.

Another bummer was that the first night, when we went out to the pool, some guys came out and started smoking cigars in the pool area. I have no idea if smoking was permitted or not and could find nothing online, but it was a bummer.

Finally, I have to talk about the pillows in this room. They were so papery thin that I thought they were cheapo feather pillows. I asked the front desk to send me some foam pillows. My Marriott account has a standing request for extra foam pillows, but most places seem to completely ignore that. I asked for at least 5 foam pillows. I got 3. That was when we found out that the papery-thin pillows WERE foam. We had enough for 4 of us to double them up, and even then they were still thinner than what I'd call a "normal" pillow.

So, some issues, but I'd say that overall, this was a good hotel. The location - just off the 101, but far enough as to not have a lot of road noise - was really convenient, and there were some really good places to eat nearby (we tried Tifa, Wood...

The property was very well done but a huge issue for us was that there was no internet connection in our room. We were having a couples get away and enjoyed being out and about for the day on Friday. We got back to our room late and wanted to relax and watch a movie but the tv would not respond. Our phones would not connect and when we tried to contact the front desk for assistance the call wouldn’t go through. It was a hassle for us, as we wanted to search for things to do in the area On our phones. My husband also wanted to be able to connect to his work emails for follow up. The following morning we spoke to someone at the front desk and she said that they were having problems with their internet connection. She apologized and offered to reduce our rate but I explained that we were using our rewards points to stay for the weekend. So she refunded two bottled waters we had charged to our room. The following day was no better really. It was just disappointing to us that we weren’t able to get access to WiFi to use our phones or watch a simple program on our tv. We were also told that we could sit in the lobby and connect to the internet there or in the business office. We didn’t do this, because we wanted to be in our room for comfort and relaxation. We were not going to hang out in the lobby watching tv.

We ate breakfast Saturday but it was really just so mediocre we didn’t bother to eat it on Sunday. The eggs were just meh and the stale bread for toast and sausage patties with very little flavor.

The bed in our room had an uncomfortable mattress. It wasn’t a high quality that we’ve come to expect at other Marriott properties. We were surprised since this is a brand new build.

Lastly I was sent an email prior to our arrival asking if there were any toiletries that could be left in the room. I requested a couple of extra shampoo and conditioners since we’d be spending a lot of time at the beach. Those were not in the room nor were the foam pillows I had also requested. Why bother to ask your guests if they’d like these things if no one is going to follow through?

I did think the staff that we interacted with were pleasant and professional. However, due to the above mentioned issues we don’t plan to return to...

Check-in for this place is 4 pm due to cleaning requirements under COVID. We had an event to attend so called the place several times ahead to see if we could arrange early check in and each time we got a run around about calling back again later. We finally gave up. On actual check in, we were told that the cost of a pet was $ 100 given that the room would require extra cleaning. This was never clearly stated on their booking page and although it's not uncommon to charge for pets, $100 is taking your guests for a ride. We got to our room and soon discovered it was filthy. The level of extra cleanliness the place advertised obviously didn't include discarding the junk in the fridge or the empty plastic bottle on the counter. We asked to change rooms and the blond girl at reception said she couldn't do anything for us, which was pretty much in line with the "can't be bothered" attitude of staff we had spoken with on the phone previously. Luckily, her colleague stepped in and helped us move to a different room. New room was cleaner but again, there were used drinking straws on the floor and minor details, like leaving some coffee pods behind for use in the machine, were overlooked. We gave up considering that we had to get to an event and didn't bother telling reception again. The only thing I can complement this hotel on is the comfort of their beds. Everything else, from pre check in to breakfast was more or less mediocre to awful....