Courtyard by Marriott Knoxville Cedar Bluff — Hotel in Knoxville

I've been a Marriott Bonvoy member for years, and based on a good experience at a different Marriott Courtyard, my wife and I spent a night at Marriott Courtyard Knoxville – Cedar Bluff in July 2022. First of all, the staff were marvelous. As helpful and friendly as they could be. The room was reasonably comfortable and was quiet. The “Bistro” has pretty good food (though pricy, and the menu is very limited), and beats having to get back in the car to drive to a restaurant. There is no daily housekeeping, so double check on that if that's important to you. Potential guests should be aware of the following issues that affected our stay: Our room was on the second floor, but the hotel's icemaker is on the first floor. The pull-out desk is useful, but nevertheless there is a lot of wasted floor space. Marriott should provide more countertop space for briefcases and suitcases. This seems to be fairly common among similar hotel chains nowadays. There are no – none - zero - amenities (soap, shampoo, etc.) except for those available via dispenser pumps in the shower. Good luck finding soap to wash your hands and face in the lavatory. I pumped some liquid soap out of the shower pump and left it in a paper cup beside the lavatory, but it resulted in a messy pool of liquid soap on the vanity top, and that’s not a satisfactory solution. The single lavatory is in a small countertop with little free space. But the hotel has chosen that skimpy space as a home for the coffeemaker. There’s hardly enough space for my shaving kit. Maybe they don’t expect guests to use the lavatory? Ridiculous. Only one USB port in the room, and it's on the alarm clock on the nightstand. There are two 110v outlets on the desk lamp and two more 110v outlets on the floor lamp. Carpet feels sticky. Need to remember to bring slippers so our bare feet don't have to touch the floor. The bathroom had an aroma that I charitably describe as mildew. Not worth the price. We use hotels six or seven nights a year, but I will take Marriott Courtyard off my list of preferred lodging while I continue to search for a hotel chain that provides adequate service...

On the bright side, everyone who works here is really nice. Unfortunately the rest of the stay was a big disappointment. The new restaurant, serving breakfast, snacks and dinner, had such a limited dinner menu it was laughable. You have a choice of a rice bowl, a cobb salad, a soup and grilled cheese combo, or a hamburger, which the server told me could not be ordered cooked to a particular done-ness, because they arrive to the kitchen ALREADY COOKED. Ew. Yet they still charge you as if you were in a restaurant: $16.00. For a pre-cooked burger! Then the room itself had a kind of damp feeling and a musty smell, and the a/c controls are either confusing or broken. But the worst part is that we had NO TV. I mean it's there, and it turns on, but we only have about 15 channels, most of them very fuzzy, and no ABC, NBC, CBS PBS at all. I called the desk to ask if we might have had it on the wrong settings, and the nice woman told me they recently got brand new LG tvs (woo-hoo!) but a lot of guests hadn't been able to find the channels listed on the printout. She was nice enough to come up and look at it, but she couldn't figure it out either. I asked if there was a manager to call, but she said no one was here but her, and apparently no one knows how to work them anyway. So frustrating, and it clearly shows how little Marriott cares for its guests or its employees. Why buy all new tvs, then not show anyone how to work them??? We are staying two nights, and won't have tv either night. We may as well have stayed at some cheap no-tell motel. At least we'd be able to...

I was very confused about this location. I am a BonVoy member and I specifically chose this location based off of its great reviews on my BonVoy app. The first night we stayed it was ok so I thought. I always Lysol all the linen before using it however I didn’t fully check all the pillows. I was making up the bed the next morning and turned over a pillow and there were three drops of old blood. Actual freaking BLOOD! i was freaking out because my children husband and I slept on these pillows and the thought of coming in contact with a strangers blood just sent me over. I wanted to give the hotel the benefit of the doubt. I checked my children and thought they may have had a scratch or scab that fell off. NO! There was no trace of blood anywhere but on this pillow. I did contact the front desk and they were concerned however I had to wait until the general manager came in to do anything about it. While my family headed out our one pillow was swapped out. We never used that pillow again. The next morning we stripped all the beds for the housekeeping so we could get fresh sheets and linen while we were out. We came back that afternoon to find that two pillows cases were dirty and had brown spots on it. I was so exhausted from going back and forth I didn’t even report it because we were leaving the next morning and I just decided we will not be back. The general manager ended up lowering our rate for two of the three nights we were there. Honestly, sleeping on someone else’s blood was so traumatizing that our stay should of been...