Drury Inn & Suites Atlanta Marietta — Hotel in Marietta

This was the first time I stayed at a Drury hotel. It until now was not a brand I was familiar with despite my background. I am guessing that may be on part that they are not as widespread as some other known brands.

The room: The room was nice. It was what I would call a small suite with a king bed and in the other room a pull out coach/bed. It seemed clean. (For reference: I consider a large suite to include a full kitchen and dining room) I checked for bed bug as I always do with there being no evidence of it. (you will be surprised how often that can be a problem at hotels). I am not from Atlanta or Georgia in general and have heard mixed things about the specific area. From what I can tell from driving through the various parts of Atlanta I can say it did not seem like the absolute best area of town and it definitely seemed like it was far from the worst area. That being said I found it comforting that the hotel parking lot was brightly lit at night with some visible security cameras and all the hotel entrances required key access at night including the main entrance. if you check in at night you have to use the service phone for them to open the front door. At one point it did run into what seemed to be a security person. NOTE: For those reading this no matter what area of town you consider this to be please take from a person that even though it has been a decade since doing so I have spent over 15 years working in hotels (no not this hotel nor any Drury hotel) that there should always be measures like this in place at any hotel as when there is not even when it is a very good area criminals take it as an invitation when there is a lack of security. The only real negative thing I can say about the room is that the shower pressure at least on the 6th floor is not very good although for transparency I should say that I can not remember a time when I stayed in a hotel in the last ten years where I was happy with the shower water pressure.

Despite that I did not use them there is an indoor pool that connects to a gated outdoor pool (you swim under the glass to go to the outside pool.) there is also a medium size workout room with various machines.

Check out times: standard check out time for the hotel brand is 11am, which to me seem a lot later than most other hotels. it gave me and the family time to wake up go have breakfast and then pack up and check out.

Food: An excellent breakfast especially if considering it came with the room, which included make your own Belgium waffles, real pancakes (not the frozen reheated junk. there was a person there pouring batter on a flattop skillet and cooking them), both loaded and regular scrambled eggs, patty sausage, home fries, cold and hot cereals, multiple juices and other beverages and a few other things.

During the evening around 5 pm there is hot food and mixed alcoholic drinks available included with the cost of the room. I was out playing tourist at that time but, I am told by other people who were staying that the food is not as substantial as what is available at breakfast, but if you really wanted to you could make a dinner of it, although I believe it is not intended in that manner.

Supposedly the food setups is a brand earmark, meaning all Drury hotels have the same or at least a similar offering for food. it is most likely the best breakfast i have ever had that came at no extra charge to a hotel stay.

The combination of the good breakfast and later checkout time with the reasonable price will make me look for Drury hotels...

All the staff were so friendly, professional, and pleasant that I feel terrible writing this review… but this was the absolute worst stay of my life. I was trying to switch back to hotels exclusively because AirBnBs wreak havoc on local housing markets (and the pricing has become outrageous), but this stay reminded me why I was drawn to AirBnB in the first place: cleanliness.

The first room had clearly not been cleaned. This was evident by hair all over the bathroom. And not the kind of hair that might have fallen out WHILE someone was cleaning; it was clear that it had come from a previous guest. I let that go. But then my sister found a roach crawling on her and the bed. Roaches are nocturnal animals. If you see one during the day, it means the nest is so full that some have been pushed out. And this was not a wilderness roach. I am from Louisiana; I know what a big cockroach/waterbug/palmetto bug/[other euphemism] from outside looks like. One person tried to point out that this IS Georgia. Georgia ain’t got ish on Louisiana flying cockroaches from pecan trees. This was a house roach, not a wilderness roach.

We probably woke that entire floor screaming and packing up our things to get out of there. My sister will never recover from that trauma. My skin is still crawling just seeing it. It scampered back into the bedframe once we screamed. We were paranoid the rest of the stay and refused to fully unpack; so we had to keep repacking and zipping everything back up so nothing crawled into our luggage. It was exhausting, infuriating, and frustrating to do.

This was obviously extremely inconvenient and made us miss a significant portion of an important event, which was the entire reason we came into town: our cousin’s graduation.

They gave us a new room. The new room had used towels. The stains on the towels didn’t look permanent. They looked like fresh makeup stains. (Stains are easy to address: spray a stain fighting solution, use bleach, and remove ruined towels from circulation.) And makeup had also been smeared on the doorway. I went down for fresh towels, and they refunded one night of the stay (which they needed to do anyway; but I appreciated the good attitude about it and that it wasn’t a fight). But then the next morning, I am greeted by a clogged drain when I go to shower, which is also a disgusting experience - to shower in standing water. My flight was early that morning, so I didn’t have time to notify front desk staff & have it fixed. It was a horrible way to start a stressful travel day.

The number of issues I encountered across multiple rooms definitely warranted more than one night’s refund. They ruined this trip. And it’s not like it was particularly cheap! We got a Motel 6 experience for not-Motel 6 prices. It was really gross. The staff were great, but there is no amount of friendliness that can make up for two dirty bathrooms, dirty towels, a roach in broad daylight, and a clogged drain - all in one trip and across multiple rooms on different floors, so these aren’t isolated problems. My skin will be crawling for the rest of my life.

Jesus himself couldn’t convince me to stay here again....

All the staff were so friendly, professional, and pleasant that I feel terrible writing this review… but this was the absolute worst stay of my life. I was trying to switch back to hotels exclusively because AirBnBs wreak havoc on local housing markets (and the pricing has become outrageous), but this stay reminded me why I was drawn to AirBnB in the first place: cleanliness. ||The first room had clearly not been cleaned. This was evident by hair all over the bathroom. And not the kind of hair that might have fallen out WHILE someone was cleaning; it was clear that it had come from a previous guest. I let that go. But then my sister found a roach crawling on her and the bed. Roaches are nocturnal animals. If you see one during the day, it means the nest is so full that some have been pushed out. And this was not a wilderness roach. I am from Louisiana; I know what a big cockroach/waterbug/palmetto bug/[other euphemism] from outside/a tree looks like. One person tried to point out that this IS Georgia. Georgia ain’t got ish on Louisiana flying cockroaches from pecan trees. This was a house roach, not a wilderness roach. ||We probably woke that entire floor screaming and packing up our things to get out of there. My sister will never recover from that trauma. My skin is still crawling just seeing it. It scampered back into the bedframe once we screamed. We were paranoid the rest of the stay and refused to fully unpack; so we had to keep repacking and zipping everything back up so nothing crawled into our luggage. It was exhausting, infuriating, and frustrating to do. ||This was obviously extremely inconvenient and made us miss a significant portion of an important event, which was the entire reason we came into town: our cousin’s graduation. They gave us a new room. The new room had used towels. The stains on the towels didn’t look permanent. They looked like fresh makeup stains. (Stains are easy to address: spray a stain fighting solution, use bleach, and remove ruined towels from circulation.) And makeup had also been smeared on the doorway. I went down for fresh towels, and they refunded one night of the stay (which they needed to do anyway, but I appreciated the good attitude about it and that it wasn’t a fight). But then the next morning, I am greeted by a clogged drain when I go to shower, which is also a disgusting experience - to shower in standing water, but my flight was early that morning so I didn’t have time to notify & have it fixed. It was a horrible way to start a stressful travel day. ||The number of issues I encountered across multiple rooms definitely warranted more than one night’s refund. They ruined this trip. And it’s not like it was particularly cheap. We got a Motel 6 experience for not-Motel 6 prices. It was really gross. The staff were great, but there is no amount of friendliness that can make up for two dirty bathrooms, dirty towels, a roach in daylight, and a clogged drain - all in one trip and across multiple rooms on different floors, so these aren’t isolated problems. My skin will be crawling for the rest of my life. ||Jesus himself couldn’t get me to stay here again. Never...