Fairfield by Marriott Inn & Suites Goshen — Hotel in Goshen

Summary:This review was wrote the primarily the first week of the grand opening and was completed the second week of stay at the hotel. With staying at this hotel now for a second week, I believe I have given a fair and honest review of the hotel. If you are looking for a nice hotel in Goshen (I was surprised for the size of the city that it would have a new hotel), this is the hotel you should stay at! I do not know if it is at discounted pricing right now, but I found for the quality of the hotel to be a fair price. The hotel has a modern style look to it and both times I was in a room which had a king sized bed. It has 4 floors and 90+ rooms.Exterior:From the outside, it looks great. Landscaping and parking lot is perfect. The only small issues I have with the exterior is I found one side door that would not automatically lock unless you pushed it closed. Because all hotels will have smokers, I was surprised on the side doors; there is no ashtray (just a trash can). At least one of the outside side doors frames appears to have spackle/paint all over it. A little goof-off should clean this up nicely. Finally I would assume long term they will have a sign by the street which will help bring more traffic to the hotel, especially after the Starbucks is built which will be located towards the street in front of the hotel.Lobby/Breakfast Area:Both of these areas were clean and very nice. The morning breakfast is your standard breakfast (waffles, eggs, bacon, cereal, bread, etc.) and is available at 6 AM. The food was good and I felt that the layout of the lobby and breakfast area was a nice design. The only nitpick about breakfast is the bottom container that holds the bread, will not open that much because the plastic container sitting on top on the rack blocks the opening of the bottom container. This is a very poor design and should be replaced or somehow adjusted so that you can open it and actually get something out of this container. Just a personal preference, but I would love to see the TV for the eating area to be more visible to more of this area. To watch, you have be seated at the bar eating area or a specific area of the room.Staff:This is the one area I was shocked by (in a great way). For being a new building, I was expecting staff members still to be wet under the ears, but everyone (cleaning staff, front desk, food preparation, etc.) is very helpful and friendly. I have spoken to management and just like all of the employees; they are very knowledgeable and friendly.Additional Amenities:If you like to exercise, you will love the exercise room. Many machines and a large TV is also in this room. At the time of writing this review, the pool was not open (should be open by the end of the week). I looked at the pool and I found the size to be very small. Personally, I do not know how they would be able to fit more than 5-10 people in the pool. Do not get me wrong, it is a nice poo,l but it is small. There is a washer and dryer on the second floor at the end of the side of building. I am pleased to see two elevators for this hotel. A lot of similar hotels in Goshen only have 1 elevator and that is just not enough. Most hotels have a computer/printer area for guests in a side room off of the lobby. To me the placement of a computer desk in the hallway off the lobby does not make sense. I sure would not want to sit in the hallway to use...

Rooms: Ok onto what people want to hear about the most. The TV is awesome and huge and lets you stream Netflix, YouTube, etc. The bathroom has a great shower. I was surprised that the bathroom appeared to be larger compared to other local hotels that I have stayed at in Goshen (about 15% bigger than other hotels). There is a lot of counter space but I was surprised that there was no hair dryer (unless I missed it). **Just an update, I have arrived back the following week and now in the same room there is a hair dryer in the bathroom. The bed is comfortable and the small accent pillow is a nice added touch. It has a long desk to work at in front of the TV. The drawers for your cloths is odd because it sits underneath the luggage holder. This might be a problem for older people to bend down to use the drawers. The air conditioning worked great and I loved the blinds for the window because it made it very dark (some hotels you get that little light that shines in, well not at this hotel). For people that like coffee, there is a Keurig, microwave and mini refrigerator. This cabinet sits in between the bathroom and sleeping area. This was a perfect location and I see other hotels trying to put it by the TV or the other side of the room. The cabinet that holds the Keurig also has USB plugs. There is a pull out ironing board and iron within the closet. There are more than enough lights and wall plugs in the room. Now I would assume I just have a bad clock radio, but the USB ports did not work on the clock radio in my room. Finally, my biggest complaint in the hotel is the smoke detector that is on the ceiling that is almost above the bed. When there is light in the room, it appears to flash green, which is fine. The problem lies when you turn off the lights and it is dark. Every 30-60 seconds, it flashes that green light, but it appears to be more white and bright. There is no noise to the flash, but it is extremely annoying and needs to be corrected. I spoke with co-workers and they both had the same issue in their rooms.

Cleanliness:

The cleaning staff does a wonderful job at making sure everything is clean in the hotel. My concern is it appears they only have a small staff of people that work in this department and on a few nights I came back around 7-8 PM and I was surprised that they were still cleaning rooms. Currently the hotel appears to be at 50% capacity and I just do not know how they will keep up with it when they have a small staff in this area. It is frustrating to see customers waiting for a room to be cleaned at 8:00 PM and all rooms should be ready by the 3:00 PM check in time. I figure management has a plan to solve this problem and to me the most important part is this hotel is clean!

Nitpicking: This section is about nitpicking, but are areas that I noticed that need attention. At least in my room, there was only one trashcan and no trashcans in the bathroom. **With staying the second week in the same room, there is now a trashcan in the bathroom. In addition, I found small areas in the bathroom that still had pencil markings from the carpenters (2 on the floor towards the toilet and one off a half wall from the sink counter). Finally, I noticed at least one ceiling tile on the first floor that was...

BE ALERT: This Indiana hotel goes by the same name as a Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott located in Goshen, NY! The email confirmation they send does not specify in the email subject line which state you have booked a room for - it just says Goshen 🤯

I detailed this very unfortunate mistake to a Marriott representative, who said it's up to the hotel branch what to do. This hotel's supervisor declared that it should have been clear to me in the email which hotel I booked (subject line says Goshen, which indeed is where I intended to book, it does not Indiana) and I was told there's nothing they could do - that I would be charged the FULL AMOUNT of the room I wouldn't be staying in (and the reservation could not be shifted to the correct Marriott Fairfield). There was no negotiating to meet halfway, to give a partial future Fairfield Inn credit, or do anything that could lessen the blow.

SCAM ALERT - The Fairfield Inn confirmation email links to its cancelation policy. It specifies the specific dollar amount that will be charged if canceling within 48 hours of the trip. HOWEVER - This hotel supervisor states I will be charged nearly 40% MORE THAN WHAT THEIR OWN CANCELLATION POLICY STATES. This is worse than a bait and switch.

SCAM PART II - Staff at both the Goshen Indiana and Goshen NY branches stated that this error happens ALL THE TIME. If it happens so frequently, one should ask why they haven't moved to remedy this. They are making $$$ off a known issue with their two same-named hotels!

What I had hoped for: An understanding human who realized I made an unfortunate mistake.

What I got: The realization that this has happened to far too many people, the hotel has discretion on how to handle the situation, the hotel fully realizes there is another hotel in its network with the same name and yet continues to allow people to fall into this trap.

Deeply disappointed that a highly regarded brand such as Marriott would allow such confusion...