Dallas/Fort Worth Airport Marriott — Hotel in Irving

I had my worst-ever hotel experience at this Marriott in November. I arrived at DFW the day before Thanksgiving, late at night. Upon landing, I called the phone number (listed on my reservation as the one to reserve the hotel’s courtesy airport shuttle) to pick me up from the airport. The woman on the other end of the phone rudely told me to wait until I got to baggage claim to call so that I could tell them the gate number before they would send the shuttle. Okay. So I hung up, quickly got to baggage claim about two minutes later, and called again, bags in hand, gate number at the ready, as instructed. I let the phone ring over a minute: no answer. At this point it’s past midnight. People are starting to leave the airport. As a younger single woman , I start to panic a bit. I wait several minutes and call again. Ring, ring, ring. Still, no answer. I try a third time. No answer. Frustrated, I call Marriott’s corporate customer service. As a Gold Elite Marriott Bonvoy member who has stayed at several Marriott properties, I’d never had an experience like this before. I told the customer service representative on the phone what was going on, and that the hotel wasn’t answering my calls. She put me on hold so that she could call the DFW Marriott and find out what was going on. Interestingly, they answered HER call, but none of my THREE phone calls. A few minutes later, the Marriott corporate customer service representative called me back and said that she’d just gotten off the phone with the same woman who told me to wait until I got to baggage claim to request the shuttle. She said the hotel receptionist told her that I NEVER CALLED BACK and that she hadn’t received any calls. I had, in fact, called the same number THREE MORE TIMES over at a 30-minute period (I have the call logs) once I got to baggage claim, and no one ever answered. I am convinced that this woman was screening my calls because she felt some type of way about me after requesting the shuttle the first time. The corporate customer service representative told me she knew she was probably lying and apologized, meanwhile my phone is about to die and the last passengers are starting to leave the baggage claim area. The Marriott corporate customer service representative told me I should try to talk to the manager once I got to the hotel to complain and assured me that the entire thing was being recorded. I told her I don’t have time to go customer service in the morning because the next day was Thanksgiving (that’s what I flew in for) and didn’t want to look like a Karen. I had no choice but to order a Lyft at that point because my phone was about to die. The customer service representative recommended that I try to get Marriott to cover my Lyft fee. She also said that the hotel staff were probably so busy because it was the day before Thanksgiving, and that’s why they missed my calls. I finally got into my Lyft and arrived at the hotel at around 1:15 AM. As soon as I walk in, these two young women are chit chatting idly at the reception desk. There are no rushing customers, no hullabaloo, nothing going on. There are also two airport shuttles sitting idly in the parking lot. Internal rage. I approached the reception desk and told them, calmly and politely, that I had been trying to call the airport shuttle while I was at the airport, but no one would answer. The woman, whose voice matched the voice on the phone, told me that “no one had been calling”, and that they had sent “several shuttles to the airport” over the past few hours. I rebutted and said no, I had been calling. She asked me what number, I showed her, and she confirmed it was the correct number. There was no sincere apology, no sympathy. Her demeanor was cold and aloof as if I was a nuisance to her. I was just an inconvenience to her and her friend, interrupting their conversation. And she straight up lied to my face. Marriott. This is disgusting. Get it together, please. No one should ever be treated like this. ||The next morning, as the Marriott representative suggested, I did try to talk to the “supervisor” on duty, a young female in her twenties, who clearly had better things to do than talk to me. That pretty much went nowhere. There was no offer to recomp me for my Lyft ride. Even the lady at the restaurant counter rolled her eyes when I interrupted her phone scrolling to ask to buy a bottle of lemon tea. This experience was so depressing and humiliating that I decided to download the Hyatt app immediately despite my Elite Gold status with Marriott. I would have paid money to AVOID this experience. NO ONE, NOBODY, deserves to be treated like this, as if lower than dirt, as a nuisance and an inconvenience, leaving them high and dry at the airport after midnight. This can really screw with someone’s mental health. You never know what people are already going through. I have no reason to stay with Marriott again when there are better options out there. Marriott: please...

Have you ever seen the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey?" Much like that film's menacing, murderous AI computer HAL, whose flawed electronic innards lead to disastrous consequences, so too does the Marriott DFW Airport North hotel stand like an ominous monolith over the travel-weary denizens of DFW, its eerie red Marriott sign pulsating like HAL's evil red eye.

The evil from within at this Marriott is not the kitsch 70s throwback decor that even the interior designer of 2001's Space Station Hilton would balk at -- it is the staff. In fact, my experience at this hotel represents the worst customer service experience I have ever had at any hotel.

Let me give you some context.

I'd say that I am a moderate business traveler; I'm on the road ~50 nights a year. 90% of those nights, I stay in a Marriott property in order to take advantage of their industry-leading rewards program. And let's face it: Marriott is nothing if not reliable. On this trip, I was staying just for a brief night, leaving very early in the morning. I was traveling with my daughter.

I checked in at 9:45 pm, only to find out that the restaurant and room service was closing at 10:00. We quickly got to the room and ordered dinner with 10 minutes to spare.

We ordered a cheeseburger, a chicken BLT, an apple juice, and a water for $79. (I'll leave the issue of cost on this dinner right there.)

When the food arrived, there was only 1 dinner -- the cheeseburger. Seeing as I had to lower my FICO score to pay for this meal, I kindly called the front desk and let them know that my chicken BLT was missing. They said they take care of it. I was a little frustrated, but it just seemed like an honest mistake someone might make late at night at the end of their shift. No big deal.

About 5 minutes later, a man arrived at my door looking confused and said something to the extent of, "you only ordered 2 dinners."

"Yes, that's correct," I replied, politely. "But I only received one of them. I still need the chicken BLT."

"Oh, ok," he replied, still seeming unsure. He added that he'd take care of it and left.

About 5 minutes later, an indignant-looking woman rapped on my door -- different from the young lady who made the first delivery. "Just so you know," she began aggressively, as soon as I opened the door. "I DID put two sandwiches in that bag that was delivered to you."

"Uh, I'm sorry, but no you didn't."

"YES, I did!" she retorted in an even more aggressive manner. I started to lose my patience.

"Well, do you want to come in here and search my hotel room for the missing sandwich?" I asked, opening the door wide to invite her in."

"No, no I do not."

"No, by all means -- search the room."

"No, I won't."

"So, basically you're saying that I'm lying and that I am stealing from the hotel by asking for a replacement chicken BLT that you think i already ate? You're actually accusing me of this?"

She angrily nodded and gestured that that was exactly what she thought. I told her that I had never been this insulted my a hotel employee and that I'd be calling the manager.

"Fine, go ahead!" she yelled as she stormed off.

What ensued was me recounting this exchange to the night manager on the phone and that it made for the worst customer service experience that I had ever had a hotel. "Do you think this is what I do?" I asked him incredulously. "I travel around to hotels, order a 2-sandwich room service meal for my daughter and I for $79 dollars, hork one of them down quickly, and then claim I never received it to get a free one?!" I felt like Larry David asking that question, and didn't get much of an answer. I also received no apology, nor any kind of satisfaction for being called a liar and thief by the wait staff.

Frankly, the manager seemed disinterested in the whole affair.

The last thing I told the manager is that he better take action on that employee, because people like that will ruin your hotel's reputation. People will write reviews and tell all of their coworkers never to go.

Dear reader, this is exactly why you are reading this...

My husband had training in Dallas for a week in January, so I tagged along. Because the training was less than a mile from the hotel, and the hotel provided a shuttle to it, we only had a rental car for 2 days and I spent the rest of the week hanging out at this hotel. First let me say, I do not normally stay in $250-$300 a night hotels, and my expectation was that it would be nicer than the $100-$150 hotels. While the lobby and amenities were larger and prettier, the room was kind of a letdown. We had a king room on the 14th floor and the bed was very comfortable, and the room appeared to be clean. NO MICROWAVE in the room! Which I'm sure was by design, so that you'd have to spend money in their restaurant, which is exactly what we ended up doing. There are 2 microwaves in a common area in the lobby, but honestly who wants to go all the way down to the lobby to heat up a cup of coffee? The bathroom was pretty and updated. The walk-in shower was nice and roomy, but something about how the glass doors were configured let the water soak the floor with every shower and there was no place to rest your foot while shaving, are all hotel showers designed by men? I intensely disliked the smell of their toiletries. The carpet in the room and halls is very ugly. Other than these minor details, the room was "ok", except for one kind of big issue, which was the moisture in the room. We had a great view from our window, unfortunately it was obscured most of the day by condensation. When we got home, the clothes that had been in the closet smelled slightly of mold or mildew. To make matters worse, there's no ventilation fan in the bathroom. So for these reasons, I don't feel like this room was worth the cost. Now on to the good stuff, the staff was completely amazing! The first part of the week, the hotel was kind of empty, but by the end of the week there was a large conference. During the course of the week, I had several opportunities to interact with the shuttle drivers, the front desk, the restaurant waiters, the breakfast staff, and the cleaning personnel, there was only one incident in which the coffee bar lady was less than polite. Everyone else we encountered was very professional and friendly every time, even after it got alot busier with the conference. As far as the amenities: the lobby is gorgeous, the gym is the largest one I've seen in any hotel, the indoor pool was a good size, but needed a cleaning. The outside pool/ patio area is very pretty, I was sad that the week was too chilly to enjoy it much. There are four elevators, one was OOS the last 2 days of our stay, but we never had more than a couple minutes wait. Parking was expensive at $20 per night and breakfast was crazy expensive at $18 per person before tax and tip. Other than the omelette station, the selections were EXACTLY the same items as the FREE breakfast we enjoyed at a $150 a night Holiday Inn Express two weeks prior. We ate in the onsite restaurant multiple times and though expensive, every meal was delicious and the staff superb. I am not sure if the bar is considered part of the restaurant or separate, but we also had good experiences there, although the drinks were extremely expensive, $26 for a double of Glenlivet 12 is insane. The proximity of this hotel to the airport is awesome, unfortunately it's not in a walkable area so you do need a car to get anywhere. There are many mentions in the reviews of the shuttles taking a long time, that was not our experience. We used the shuttle 6 times, we never waited longer than 10 minutes for pick up or delivery, and the two shuttle drivers were the nicest guys! There is a Subway in walking distance, and also possibly a snack cafe in one of the close by office buildings (I saw it listed on Google but did not check it out, so not sure if it's still there). Even though you are paying crazy high prices with everything at this hotel, my overall impression of this hotel is positive, mainly due to the friendliness and helpfulness...