Courtyard by Marriott Las Cruces at NMSU — Hotel in Las Cruces

I stayed 4 nights at the Courtyard when in Las Cruces for work.||||There was a lot to like about the hotel. A lot. ||||The location is superb. The NMSU campus surrounds the hotel. You can walk to the football stadium. For those doing the tourist thing, Old Mesilla is maybe 5 minutes away by car. ||||The hotel itself is a newer iteration of the Courtyard design with noticeable extras. The huge outdoor pool is way better than you expect. Almost resort-like. The terrace is also nice. I've certainly stayed at hotels charging a nightly resort or destination fee with smaller and/or inferior spaces than the terrace and pool at the Courtyard.||||Staff were generally good to very good. In particular, two employees at the front desk were excellent. Carlos checked me in. He was polite, professional and just hospitable. He was wearing a necktie and business clothing with an overall neat appearance. That's a welcome change from some Courtyards that allow staff to wear casual clothes to the point where as a guest you don't know if someone is staff or a guest. The other excellent front desk employee was Sophie or Sophia. ||||The Courtyard is fine for anyone coming and staying a night or two for work or anyone coming for a NMSU football game. ||||Just don't ask for anything and don't have any expectations. For those who ask for something or have some degree of expectations, the overall standard, execution and attention to details is below standard.||||Here are the issues that I experienced:||||None of the basic requests (100 percent feather pillows and extra towels) that were noted on my reservation and specified on my Ambassador profile were fulfilled.||||The general manager sent an amenity consisting of a bottle of water and a bag of chips with a form-letter typed note to my room. Had she actually cared or appreciated my loyalty she would have looked at my Ambassador profile and saw that I don't need junk food. ||||No local newspapers were available in the lobby or anywhere in the hotel. I also didn't see any local tourist brochures or local information.||||As I said, this is a newish Courtyard with some better than average aspects. It's almost a hybrid between a standard Courtyard and a full-service hotel. ||Unfortunately, owners/management kept the standard Bistro concept. While fine for drinks, the food is extremely limited and not very good. Some Courtyards have a full-service restaurant. Not many but some. Given the location on the NMSU campus, it seems like a tremendous missed opportunity not to have a real restaurant or at least a better and higher quality food menu. ||||Housekeeping was inconsistent. There were also maintenance issues. While I received daily housekeeping, one day the housekeepers did not service my room until almost 4 pm. Cleanliness was so-so. The walk-in shower had signs of mold and mildew. There was also extensive hair in the shower, specifically long strands of hair on the wall-mounted dispensers containing shampoo, conditioner and body wash. Some of the fixtures had rust. Furniture in the room had visible wear-and-tear. As did some public spaces. ||||The rest of the room was clean and was appointed in the typical Courtyard manner. Wireless internet was sufficient. The TV was newer and huge with a good selection of channels. Air conditioning worked well. Noise insulation was very good, too. In terms of in-room amenities, my room had a Keurig coffeemaker. No complimentary bottles of water were provided. In the bathroom, I had a bar of soap, a small bottle of lotion, and another bar of soap by the walk-in shower. ||||While the outdoor pool is great, there's no bathroom at the pool or anyone outside on the terrace. So guests probably urinate in the pool since going to the bathroom requires you to walk inside wearing wet swimsuits. There was also no trash container at the pool. Only a bin for used towels.||||I needed a pair of pants cleaned by the dry cleaner. The form in the closet is a photocopied slip of paper without any listed prices. I dropped off my pants in the laundry bag at the front desk. The vendor apparently refused to pick up the pants the first day, claiming they were busy. At the end of the second day the pants were returned by the front desk because the hotel couldn't get the dry cleaner to pick them up. What's the point of offering a service if you can't actually deliver on it? At the very minimum, the hotel should have tried a different dry cleaner or let me know sooner and I would have called around and tried to find an alternative dry cleaner myself. As a result, I missed a dinner reservation at an upscale restaurant because I didn't have appropriate pants for the restaurant.||||Courtyard is one of the Marriott brands where Bonvoy elites don't get free breakfast. Instead, at check-in you can opt for $10 per person per day vouchers for redemption on food or drinks. I had two people in my room. So, I had $20 per day. At breakfast one day I was told I couldn't apply two $10 vouchers to one order even though I was entitled to redeem $20. I had to do two separate transactions, meaning my under $20 breakfast wasn't fully covered. And the prices on the menu for virtually all of the breakfast items are just a couple of dollars over the $10 voucher, so you can't actually get a breakfast item with coffee, tip, and tax with the voucher. Over $13 for a coffee and yogurt parfait. Even two vouchers doesn't cover the cost of two breakfast items and two coffees. Worse yet, my medium Starbucks coffee was only filled three-fourths of the way. So I didn't actually get a full cup of coffee. Another morning I had hair in the parfair that was ordered. Seriously. How does hair get in yogurt? In the future, I would skip the hotel's breakfast and drive 5 minutes to Starbucks or McDonald's. You can get a better breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee for half of the price of the hotel. ||||At night, the bar opens at 5 pm. The dinner menu is very limited. Things like flatbread, burgers, a grilled chicken sandwich, and caesar. There were a  couple additional options on the menu, but those were unavailable for a couple consecutive days. It seems like they didn't pre-order enough food ingredients for the occupancy. Between the end of breakfast and 5 pm, a couple of salads and parfaits are available from the lobby market. Additionally, the lobby market also sells beer and wine. It seems like on a Saturday with college football the bar should be open earlier than 5 pm. Or maybe have some pre-game promo or special.||||Speaking of the NMSU football team ... the college takes over the hotel on game weekends. The team has a breakfast buffet right in the lobby and bar area, making it inconvenient for other guests to order or eat. Public spaces like the patio are closed down as the team watches movies on a big-screen TV. The limited-service bar/restaurant can be overwhelmed with players, coaches, and parents. Imagine wanting to use the pool or sit on the patio, enjoying a nice al fresco dinner only to discover an entire college football team has taken over the hotel without actually buying it out. Maybe they should require the college to buy-out the hotel? I know NMSU is obviously a good customer and a major stakeholder in the hotel. In this situation, it seems fair to require the school to buy-out the hotel.||||After checking out and returning home, I discovered I left a blazer and dress shirt at the hotel. It took multiple phone calls and emails, including from Marriott's Ambassador Services, to get the items sent to me. No manager ever called me about this issue, despite being assured twice that a manager would call me by telephone. A hotel employee tried blaming Ambassador Services for the hotel's lack of responsiveness. The hotel insisted on me pre-paying for a shipping label but FedEx and UPS generally require weight to calculate shipping prices. I offered to pay by card or check whatever it cost. The hotel wouldn't agree to this. Finally, we settled on a fixed-rate USPS box that I pre-paid for. It took more than a day for the hotel to confirm that it was being sent. Just very frustrating. And frankly disappointing. For $9 and change, they easily could have sent it themselves and just billed me the amount. ||||Lastly, I booked a rate that included 2,000 bonus Bonvoy points for each night of my stay. I never received these points. Like the shipping of my left-behind clothes, I had to send several emails and have Marriott Ambassador Services contact the hotel at least twice to get the points posted to my account.||||For the dry cleaning issues, housekeeping issues and the hair in the food, the hotel provided me with 10,000 Bonvoy points. A manager also offered to adjust my rate. I declined that offer because I was traveling for work and that was of no value. I told him I'd give his restaurant a second chance if he wanted to offer me a token discount on the meal. He offered a comped meal, which I accepted. I didn't ask for or expect a comped meal. Normally, when you say comped you expect a comped meal. I ordered a starter, a main course and 3-4 glasses of wine. It was never comped. It was billed to my room. At check-out, the overnight auditor/front desk clerk had to manually remove the food charges. He said he couldn't comp the alcohol. No big deal, though normally when someone offers a comped meal they mean a fully comped meal. ||||All things considered, the Courtyard has a lot going for it. Las Cruces doesn't have many hotels, despite a population of 100,000 and a state university. While probably the best chain hotel in the city, there are a lot of issues related to attention to details, attentive and engaged management, execution of amenities and services, etc. Pretty much everything I experienced could easily be fixed. I would have no problem giving the hotel a second chance if I returned...

!!!SAFETY AND SECURITY WARNING!!! First time trying out a Courtyard by Marriott and this experience left much to be desired. I would not recommend risking your personal safety and security.

Timothy Moulton (front desk service manager on duty) checked me in. I was relaxing in my room when suddenly and unexpectedly another guest was able to access and make entry into my room. This was extremely alarming and a completely unacceptable invasion of my privacy. The other guest was issued a key card that unlocked the door to my room. The other guest and I went to the lobby to ask the front desk staff along with the supervisor, and manager about this problem. Hotel staff could not account for the error that led up to this safety and security failure. The other guest was issued new keys to a different room. I requested reassurance that no other keys and no other guests could gain entry into my room; however, the hotel staff could not guarantee this to me. Other than handing over a different set of keys to the other guest, nothing further was done to rectify the issue; for example, taking the other keys back. The front desk couldn't check if any other keys had access and they couldn't switch me to another room. Instead, the other guest booked just a few doors away from me on the same floor. Basically, what I got left with was worry that someone else could walk into my room at any moment unannounced, or access my room while I was not there and take my property and belongings. I asked whether or not the other guest still had access to my room but the staff person was not sure about this either. Unfortunately, my concern about safety and security was left unresolved. In addition, this was apparently not the first time the mistake had been made that night because my colleague, who was also staying at the same hotel at the same time, also experienced this exact same problem! So, it wasn't bad enough to make the mistake once but there is so little attention to detail that it happened twice on the same night.

As if that wasn't a bad enough experience, I was trapped in the hotel elevator for a significant period of time because of the inexcusable failures of the hotel staff and its management. I used the call button several times but, the front desk staff hung up on all of my [numerous] attempts to reach out for assistance. I had to call friends who were waiting in the lobby for me to help alert the front desk. The front desk staff also apparently did not understand the meaning of the alarm bell that I was ringing to signal that there was a problem. The elevator emergency phone was later found to be broken which is why the front desk was hanging up the phone calls from the elevator. When I asked for an explanation, the hotel staff did not understand why the phone was ringing so frequently and thought these were prank calls and they thought the elevator alarm bell would simply stop on its own. Another staff member explained that the equipment failures were apparently a known problem for quite some time. Safety and emergency equipment in disrepair does not inspire confidence despite being a relatively newer property.

Altogether, this experience was by far the worst I have ever had across all Marriott properties and across all hotel brands I've stayed. The hotel offered 15,000 points as an apology. Overall, the response to my concerns was extremely inappropriate and inadequate. The hotel could have done more: (1) keep up maintenance on the hotel and fix safety and emergency equipment; (2) don't give room access to unauthorized guests and reset all keys to a room when mix ups happen; (3) don't respond with apathetic indifference to concerns that are brought up and actively diminish customer concerns argumentatively.

tldr: got walked in on by another guest because hotel gave out keys to another guest; got trapped in the elevator with broken phone and hotel didn't respond to the alarm bells - got out because I had to call friends who were waiting for me...

Very Bad Experience..... Book for 3 days with a discount They charged my credit card $180.00 Later, the day it expired, I told them that I wanted to extend 3 more nights. I told them that I could do it at the reception and the lady on duty told me that there was no problem, so I rented it for another three days. They charged my card for another $180.00 Later, when I wanted to reserve another two days, they told me that it was only online and then I did it. When I went to pick up the key for the other reservation, they told me that I owed them 650.00 from the past reservation and that they could not give me the discount because I did not do it online,i told them the lady on duty told me that she can do it on the lobby so the manager said we cant honored that price any way so They did not let me enter my room with all my belongings in it ....until I authorized another $180.00......i was in the parking lot for 4 hours waiting ... Then around 9 at night i paid $ 180.00 they let me in, 3 hours later the manager Tim overdraw my card charged another $654 00 above 900 overdrawn without asking me and the general manager AMY MILLER was covering it, saying that she had no superiors and she was the owner Of The Place When I told her who was above of her, they also threw away all the food that I had in the refrigerator without notifying me She got even angrier when I told her that I was missing some colognes from the room apart from arrogant, thieves and nothing professional they haven't give me all the money back ... they owe me about $900 Dlls. it's more than a month my card still in negative balance I'm not coming back just to take them to court wait for my...