Buffalo Marriott at LECOM HARBORCENTER — Hotel in Buffalo

This Marriott is my go-to hotel in Buffalo. In my opinion, it's the most polished, big-city-feeling hotel in the city, and it's no surprise that they've been recognized by Marriott International for numerous awards including best guest satisfaction and more.

I've stayed here numerous times since the property opened, I've had my employees stay here when they visit Buffalo, and last year I hosted a small event here for my company. Each time, my colleagues and I agreed that the location was excellent, the lobby was beautiful, the M Club was spacious and well appointed, and the service at the restaurant and bar have been excellent.

On that topic, the front-of-house and bar staff are fantastic. Since I've now been here for an extended time, I've received exceptional personalized service from nearly every associate here. I've more than one time mentioned to guests I have with me that I am consistently impressed with the polish, professionalism, and composure (sometimes under duress) of this team.

I am currently staying here during COVID so there are, understandably, certain things that are not the same as usual. The bar has limited hours, the M Club is closed, there is no breakfast availability (except weekends), and there is no daily housekeeping. In general, this is mostly understandable and does increase confidence in health safety, though I have stayed at other Marriott hotels in New York that are applying COVID guidance in different (and less restrictive) ways.

The parking situation is weird. Don't get me wrong, you can't beat the convenience of self-parking directly in the same building, but there are so many variables that affect pricing and some people end up paying more than others for no reason other than apparent mismanagement. Without getting into specifics or making recommendations, I'll publicly offer the information that parking costs $12 overnight and $5 to stay for the day. The booth where parking fees are collected seems to close around 7pm during the week and 12am on the weekends though, so arriving after this time means there's no charge. Nobody checks when you leave. Many modern parking garages solve this problem with automated kiosks upon entry and exit. Not this one.

Congratulations, you've almost made it to the end of my longest Google review. If you liked it, please leave a meta-review of this review.

Wrapping up, I'd like to call out a few all-stars. A special thanks to: @Casey for keeping me company and the delicious Irish Coffees & Pimm's Cups (get one), @Emrah for keeping me entertained (whether he intends to or not), @Jasmine for the excellent Negroni and her super upbeat demeanor, @Anna and @Arianna for always greeting me with a smile, @Yonis for the jokes and keeping me in line, and finally, @Casey, @Bill, @Victoria, @Karen, and @Megan at the front desk for dealing with my seemingly incessant...

From the beginning, my stay at this hotel was challenging and unnecessarily unpleasant. Upon pulling into a very tight circular driveway to what we thought was the main entrance, there was neither no one to greet us, nor tell us where to go; there wasn't even a luggage cart in sight. I walked around looking for an actual person and found no one. I did see signage directing me to the elevators, which is where I learned the lobby was accessible only by entering and proceeding to the 7th floor. But the adventure didn't end there! The person who checked me in was pleasant and professional, and admitted she accidentally sent me a text that my room was ready, although it wasn't. She instructed me to park in the ramp and take the elevator back up to the lobby, then transfer over to another set of elevators to go to my room. She didn't say that only one elevator in the entire parking ramp was able to go back to the 7th floor lobby. The only floors we could go to in the elevator were other levels in the parking ramp. Our only alternative was to exit the parking ramp and walk around the outside of the building, with our luggage in tow, to find a way back up to the 7th floor. The only elevator that would take us to the 7th floor was the one I initially used to check in, which was considerably far from where we exited the parking garage with our luggage. If I was not from Buffalo I would have received a very poor first impression, especially if I arrived from out of the area with my entire family, on a typical cold March evening. There needs to be a way to make guests feel secure without the extreme inconvenience.

We have been to comparable hotels out of this area. We have never ever been to a hotel that has as surprisingly few amenities as this place; even free Wi-Fi was excluded. Although we were guests of the hotel, we still had to pay for parking, and went elsewhere for breakfast since it was not included as well.

Even without the poorly designed, user unfriendly logistics, this hotel is not worth the price guests are charged.

Something that most likely is unable to be adjusted is the drag racing on the skyway which kept us awake until the wee hours of the morning. Unfortunately, average city noises were too easily audible through the windows as well.

A very long explanation of why I would absolutely not recommend this...

My husband and I stayed here on Oct 26 for one night. Room was clean and front desk staff were helpful. I am a Titanium member and have stayed in many Mariott hotels. Given I paid $550 for the stay, this is one of the worst experience so I do not recommend staying here. Please see reason below.

My rating is very low because of the executive lounge:

1. Breakfast was not good with only limited food items (just bread, eggs, sausages and cereal - pleade read further as these weren't really available to us)
2. Coffee from the Nespresso machine tasted very weird which is surprising as quality should be quite standardized with pods. I am familiar with Nespresso coffee as we have the same machine and pods at home. So I assume it has something to do with the maintenance of the machine itself. We each took a sip and had to throw out the rest.
3. For a full half hour, there was no staff to help or manage the food stations. For example, I wanted a clean fork as they ran out at the front but couldn't get one since there was no attendent so I had to shared one fork with my husband. As a guest at Mariott, I think I should at least deserve a fork for my meal.
4. There were 5 very rowdy kids who picked cereal from the cereal/snacks stations with their bare hands over and over again. Because there was no staff present in the lounge, there was absolutely no control over food contamination and noice level. Just to fill up, we were planning to have cereal after having tasted the overcooked eggs, but having seen that, we walked away that morning feeling still hungry and unsatisfied from the dining experience.
5. Breakfast finishes at 10:30am, however, at 10am (a full half hour before breakfast was supposed to end), the attendent left the executive lounge and never came back. There was only a small amount of overcooked eggs and 2 sausages left. So basically, we had no real edible food given the scenario we saw as described in #4 above.

Overall, I do not recommend this hotel location because you do not get a proper return for the price you pay - extremely poor value. It was, after all, $550 a night in Buffalo city which we thought should be one of the best in town. We are very disappointed to...