Fairfield by Marriott Inn & Suites Newark Liberty International Airport — Hotel in Newark

From the title and the ratings you can probably assume that this review will not be positive. But before reading on please know that the staff was wonderful, kind, helpful and accommodating. I hold management or ownership of the property responsible for the problems I had on my 6-night stay.||1) Elevator mark 1. When we arrived only one elevator worked. On the other one the button light did not work. The lift always stopped on the 2nd floor. It was very slow. I was on the 6th floor. Often when the lift arrived it was full of people and luggage trying to get down and there was no room. One day it took 15 minutes for me to get downstairs. I almost missed breakfast (I come from Alaska so I was eating late adjusting to jet lag.) Looking at other reviews, this lift has not been working since May. This was August.||2) Elevator Mark 2. One day the elevator just didn’t come. It was broken. I had to walk down 6 flights, and walk up again and down again. I was told that it would be fixed by evening when I came back, it was not. Later it was fixed but it failed again on our last day. I am elderly, have arthritis and lost 25% of my lung capacity to COVID. Thank goodness for my Albuterol inhaler. I felt badly for people with walkers and canes. The kind staff carried our luggage down the six flights at checkout.||3) Power at bedside. I arrived from Alaska after a red eye. I had booked the night before so I could go right to bed. When I plugged in my CPAP machine there was no power in the receptacle at the base of the lamp. I had to move the heavy nightstand, un plug the clock radio and plug in the CPAP.||4) The Radio. Before I unplugged the radio, I noticed that the clock was one hour off. This was August. Daylight time started when? Management should have a checklist for things like this.||5) The phone in the room did not work. I reported this and staff reported it to management. It remained not working for 6 days. I used the house phone near the inoperative elevator to contact the front desk.||6) While the phone didn’t work the red message lamp kept blinking. Covered it with a washcloth at night.||7) Because I avoided the stairs I ended up using the restrooms downstairs. One time after I flushed a fountain of water erupted from the floor drain. Reported this and it was fixed.||8) The hotel is in the middle of a maze of highways and is sometimes difficult to get to, especially from one direction where you need to quickly cross several lanes of traffic. I asked if they had instructions or a map. They did not. The hotel should consider providing instructions.||Come on guys, you can do better. I looked at the picture of Bill Marriott in the hallway across from the inoperative lifts and wished I could cover it to save him from the embarrassment of of having this hotel bear his name.||One other note. I am an elderly (ok old) man. The toilets were low, good for families with little kids, but sometimes difficult for me to get up from. Further there was no grab bar by the bathtub to help steady me when I got out of the shower. If you are elderly I suggest you ask for a room for handicapped people.||Ending on a positive note, breakfast was very good and, as I said, the staff was great, dealing with a...

When booking the hotel, I knew it's a 3-star hotel so I kind of expected that it's pretty basic which is I don't mind. The reason for giving a 1-star review is one of the front desk personnel is extremely rude and inappropriate. At first, I notified David who worked at the front desk about my phone in my suite that isn't working with no dial tone at all. I need a working phone to receive a 4:30 am wake up call to catch my early morning flight. He said he would send one of the maintenances as soon as they return from their break. After waiting for almost two hours without anyone coming to fix or replace the phone, I called the front desk using my cell phone. Another front desk personnel by the name of Ana answered the phone. When I told her the hotel phone in the suite isn't working and maintenance never showed up, she said the maintenance have left for the day. I said I talked to David earlier and he promised to send a maintenance after they return from their break. She offered me another suite. I said I have my stuffs out and I don't want to pack and repack my luggage so I would rather stay in my suite and have someone bring a working phone and swap it with the broken one. She kept insisting that I move to another suite because it would be the only solution. Feeling frustrated, I asked to be transferred to David because he was the one I spoke to and who promised to send a maintenance to fix the phone in my suite. She said David is helping another customer. I said I would wait. She didn't sound happy that I didn't take her words and she hung up on me. I was extremely disappointed that I was being treated in such way in a hospitality business. I decided to come down to the lobby to express my feeling and my extreme disappointment for such treatment. I told Ana in front of David that she is being rude and unprofessional. Not being able to resolve the broken phone issue because the maintenance is gone for the day is understandable, but hanging up the phone on a hotel guest because she didn't want a guest to talk to the manager is totally unacceptable. What even interesting about the whole thing is when I asked David if I could talk to the manager on duty, he said there is no manager at the present time. I then asked for the manager's contact information and he handed me "Jesenia Del Toro-Cruz" business card. Jesenia is the Assistant General Manager. Not until the next morning when I checked out that I learned David is actually the front desk manager. It's clear to me that he was protecting himself and Ana. No hotel guest should be treated this way. It is clearly a very poor customer service and a horrible experience for any guest. The hotel management should've trained their employees well and should've never put someone like Ana at...

The rooms are nice, but most of the way through our stay the door lock died. One of my relatives ("A") had medication that they needed, and all of our personal belongings were left in the room. We tried getting new key cards, but nothing.

I've worked at a Fairfield, and the locks all operate the same way; no matter the state. Upon further inspection, when trying to scan our card, I noticed that the light indicator flashed like the lock was dead. We brought this up to the front desk, and they sent an incompetent maintenance man. He asked us if someone else was in the room. We wouldn't have asked for them to help us unlock our room if someone was in there, but we said no. He tried scanning his master key card two more times shrugged, sighed, and walked away without another word. My 2nd relative ("B") with me on this trip came back up and asked, "Did the maintenance guy come and fix it?". After explaining what I and "A" experienced, we waited a while because we thought he was coming back to try something else.

We waited for 15 minutes! Our feet hurt after a long day, it's 22:00, and we are tired. "B" went back down to the desk and asked when the maintenance guy was coming back to help us. The guy at the front desk told "B" that there was nothing he could do because they had to get permission to call a locksmith, and even then they couldn't guarantee when a locksmith could get there. No offer was made to give us another room, and "B" had to demand it because the man behind the desk was saying "if the [maintenance man]'s keys don't work, I don't know what we can do. We will have to get someone in here tomorrow", and almost left us high and dry with no room! This was on our last reserved night too!

Absolutely ridiculous! I will report back with information on how the morning shift reacts to this situation, but we are appalled by how the second shift is handling this situation. There were no major issues until now, but this is a gross mishandling of this situation. At this moment, I would be wary about staying here. I get that things happen, but this is NOT how these situations should be handled! Renovations or not!

Edit: So, I apologize to whoever was working night audit that night. It was late, and I didn't realize night audit hadn't clocked in quite yet when this first went down. I realized this because about an hour after we finally got to our new room, a nice lady called from the front desk and said they were able to get our room opened. Now, I still wouldn't recommend this place. But at least someone put in the work to help us. I don't remember your names (NA lady and Security guy), but you two are awesome for helping...