Marin Suites Hotel — Hotel in Corte Madera

Update: May '18. I've had the inconvenience of staying here the past 3 weeks. With the heat on the first and the third and their use of a swamp cooler style unit in the room, it becomes nearly unbearable when returning at 6 or 7p. None of them are filled when I arrive, meaning that you need to fill them. Some rooms have a hose on the sink, most don't. It takes forever to fill them. For good measure, 2 of the 3 weeks, every day, Monday through Friday, a white Acura sat parked in the Registration Only parking. Today, it was a white Mercedes. No excuse for this. If you mark the parking as Registration Only, have them move their car or tow it, no matter the circumstance. As I've found out, this is the season that people visit the area for a ton of reasons, and with that comes Wifi issues. It's 10:30pm right now, and Youtube can't hold a 144p video without pausing. Websites feel as if they take forever to load, and they do, showing a mere 20Kbps speed on a rainmeter network meter. Loading this Edit Review page took nearly a minute. I'm also rather suspect of the rooms selected for AAA vs Non-AAA. The last 3 bookings have been with AAA rate and the past visits were not. These 3 stays all had me in similar rooms, corner rooms adjacent to the stairs and/or elevator. I think I've ended up in one of these rooms once in multiple stays in the past, when the hotel was near to capacity and I booked last minute. This doesn't feel like a coincidence. Twice, sure, but 3 times in a row... doesn't seem as much of a by chance thing. To note, the staff here is still wonderful and kind. I don't believe the desk staff has any say in the matters above, but it doesn't change the frustration or annoyance with it. I can deal with heat so long as the room eventually cools, but the wifi and rooms assigned are deal breakers. Not a vast amount of hotels in the area, but not having a proper AC unit and wifi/internet capacity that can handle a decent amount of traffic is rather inexcusable in this day and age. Heck, wifi could be solved with paid prioritization or QOS limitations being added. But alas, months later and wifi still had trouble.

Original Review: Definitely a good hotel. The room I had was with a full kitchen, everything included. Full size stove, not just a cooktop. Room was clean and we'll kept with a home feel, not a hotel feel. TVs we're large with full cable, not just a dozen channels. Bathroom was beautiful with a full sized regular tub. The bedroom, yes, a separate bedroom, have a ceiling fan, which is a nice touch. The reasons for 4 stars, the rooms have a wall furnace, no proper ac (stand-alone units). The main issue is they have a lot of 2 prong, ungrounded outlets. The AC units and anything that is normally grounded, they just removed the grounding pin from the plug. This isn't a safe solution to the problem, but it is functional. I didn't like having my laptop plugged in to the now ungrounded lamp/outlet splitter. Having something go horribly wrong could mean a new power supply at the least or a new laptop at the worst. Outside of the outlets, standalone ac units and the wall furnace, it is a very nice and well kept hotel with a friendly and helpful staff. I'll be booking my stays in the area here...

No A/C? I realize Marin did not get as warm as it does the last decade or so, but really NO A/C? The swamp cooler you have in the rooms are inadequate, they do not cool off the room and leave a puddle of water on the carpet. Do NOT even think of charging me for a carpet stain or puddle of water, you created that mess, clean it up. Really, how difficult would it be to be on a small window A/C, they only cost $80-100 retail at home depot and the comfort of the room would dramatically improve. Then I had to learn that I needed to dump 5lbs of ice into the "swamp cooler" in order for it to work, I had one small ice bucket and and had to make seven trips to your ice machine to fill up the "swamp cooler", really, why did you not provide ice in the suite so that I did not have to make seven trips up and down stairs to fill up the swamp cooler? You overcharge for what a traveler receives in your room due to this. It was 85 degrees in the room and 67 degrees outside. You should have paid me to stay in your facility. Also, I have stayed on a couple of occasions, I will give a facility three attempts to determine my reviews or ads will continue and average the ratings based on three different stays. Your ONE elevator has NEVER been operational. Seriously, when I check in, your staff tells me about how to use the elevator to get to our rooms, yet we lug our baggage to the elevator and IT IS NEVER WORKING. Do not tell me to drag my luggage to a NON-OPERATIONAL elevator, how STUPID. My first stay was in a room on the south side of the building, that room had a coffee maker. 2nd trip my room was on the north side of the building, NO COFFEE MAKER. Really? Parking on the north side of the building, is too difficult, only compact cards can park there, as if two vehicles are parked in opposite spaces, you cannot back out of the parking spaces without hitting the other vehicle. You do not have the required number of assigned "disability" parking spaces as mandated by Federal ADA compliance regulations. Even forget any ADA compliance, how is someone in a chair going to get from the lobby to the 2nd or 3rd floors when your elevator actually works and is not on the far east side of the building. Since we have to use the swamp cooler and fans in the rooms to cool off, you cannot hear the TV unless you turn the sound of the TV over the sound of the fans, not very relaxing. The fans are so disturbing and disruptive, you cannot sleep at night. Then the outdoor area, usually has a party going on, so no sleeping again and where was the "pool" you advertised? Your staff during checking and checkout, were not trained, they did not know how to follow the tasks of checking a customer in or checking a customer. For what you charge you should have the amenities that go along with your pricing. At this point, I do not need to stay a third night, I just need to tell everyone to just use the Best Western that is two...

Definitely not worth full price. The suites are really big which is cool and the furniture was clearly updated recently, but the mattress needs to be replaced and the building itself is definitely old and creaky.

Sound insulation is terrible and Im not usually sound sensitive, but there were two large children's birthday parties with kids racing around the walkways on every floor and it didn't matter if you had your door open or closed, you heard every word, stomp, and laugh and our movie was kindof hard to enjoy. Not much the hotel can do, but forewarning to go for garden side rather than pool side if you want some quiet.

The sheer curtains are necessary, but not so great for privacy given the layout, meaning that you spend most of the day behind blackout curtains which can be pretty depressing. Again, not much the hotel can do.

Breakfast to go bags were a series of packages goods. Muffin, nutrigrain bar, oatmeal, apple, coffee available as well. I would have rather been able to pick and choose which items to put in the bag since it felt wasteful to leave behind the items that were products or flavors we didn't want to eat. Plus my apple was really badly bruised. It all came in a small paper bag that was kinda crumpled like an angry mom packed it. Again, would have liked to pick and choose and pack myself.

The kitchen was very minimally equipped, and the single knife supplied was pretty useless. There was also no baking sheet or even aluminum foil to use in the oven... So we had to get pretty creative for our pizza. Then there were no hot pads to try and take it out. There was also no sponge or scrub brush even though there was soap and a dish rack. These are the little things that would have been helpful for us to know before we came, as we were pretty unprepared, but could easily have brought some of these things with us. I would definitely recommend the hotel purchase these items for their suites as it wouldn't cost much but definitely would improve the experience. That said the kitchen was immaculate, and the appliances in good shape.

The location was really ideal, and there are some nice walking trails and stores within walking distance which is great.

The room was clean enough, and the updates to the room nice and appealing, even though you could identify where corners were cut or budget kindof ran out (mattress, bathtub/shower). I did call room service when I arrived to clean up some nail clipping left by a prior guest in the closet, and they never really showed up to clean it up. I didn't make a stink either as it didn't really bother us and it was a pretty small thing in a weird corner of the room, so it could have been a fluke.

All in all, a good enough experience, and I would probably come back if I could get the same discount I got this time around. I wouldn't pay full price, and I would definitely bring some items to round out the kitchen. I would also ask for...