Courtyard by Marriott Norfolk Downtown — Hotel in Norfolk

We booked this hotel last minute for a one-night (Friday) stay before flying back home. The rate was $256 when I booked and ended up being $310 total after valet. This hotel was a total dump. There is nothing around it except for corporate buildings, with only parking lots and an electrical grid directly adjacent to the building, and no visible coffee shop or restaurants within walking distance. The harbor is about 4 blocks down, but you had to walk through areas where people were camping out and sleeping. At night, no thanks. The carpet in the hallway and rooms were filthy and smelled old/unclean. Ice machine on floor not working and you had to go to floor 2 or the lobby to find one. The bistro is not currently operating for dinner, and the coffee shop is only open for a three-hour window in the mornings. It was supposed to be open from 6:30-9:30am on weekdays and 7-10am on weekends. I watched the staff there tell the guy in front of me that she was out of a few things because “we closed” (at 9:38am). He questioned her and pointed to the sign, she acted like she didn’t know they were still open and looked at the sign to read it - just a VERY poor and lazy attitude in general. She was the slowest person I’ve ever seen at a coffee shop and it was clear that she was inconvenienced to be working. When it got to my turn, I asked for coffee and she asked if I was paying by card or charging to the room. I asked for the complementary coffee (offered on the sign right there in front of me), and she acted like she didn’t know what that was. I pointed to the sign and she played dumb, but then she went to the back and brought out two lukewarm cups of coffee. Upon checkout, my husband called the valet for the car and when he got down there had to wait for the valet to finish their personal conversation while sitting around to find that the car wasn’t even pulled around. They weren’t at all busy, just poor service. Between the rundown rooms, the area having nothing to do/walk to safely on the weekends and the less than pleasant/unhelpful staff, we couldn’t get out of this place fast enough. We’ve stayed at Marriotts all over the country and all across the world - almost all of them have been pleasant experiences at the very minimum, ranging to exceptional, but this has been hands down the worst one I can think of that we’ve stayed at. Marriott corporate should reconsider keeping this in their portfolio, and if they do, the owners should pour some serious time and money into it to renovate, fix things and completely retrain or...

As a Rewards member, I do like the new Bonvoy Rewards feature to choose points rather than skip out on housekeeping for the day. It really is an added bonus too, when it makes it an eco-friendly stay decision.

Overall the stay was good. I felt I was congested and stuffy which was already pre-conditioned before I got there, however my condition did not improve. The air quality may have made it worse, but the room, galley ways and community spaces did not make it better either.

The guest computer seems to have a virus.

The Night Auditor who assisted during my checkout on the early morning of 7/12 was not pleasant. Her customer service was overall rude. I waited at least 15 minutes without having her assist me. Prior to assisting me, she was assisting another guest for 5 minutes. There was no "I will be right with you in a moment" I had to walk up and when I approached her, she just stared at me. I then said I am checking out, and I need a print out of my incidentals and receipt stay. She then looked at the screen and folio and said, you have a 3rd party issue. (I could tell she was already worrying that this was going to do more work because of that note. I used to be a night auditor for the courtyard before and in honesty, it's also up to the customer to make this a pleasant communication for her.) Anyway, I already knew this, as I was working with my organization to get this reconciled.) I let her know that my CC was still on file and she can go ahead and charge my personal CC. It was quick because I didn't need to have her fix the situation especially within the mood she was already in. She seemed relieved after I made the check out nice and easy for her, as it should have been the other way around.

Overall Courtyard needs to also update their archaic technological services. There should be automated features to help with the check-in stay. The TV and the programming are also antiquated, the process of service is also too old fashion.

I think the Bistro is an okay update for the Courtyards which was established 6-7 yrs ago. however it's still a very limited menu.

Overall, I did enjoy the gym, swimming pool and outdoor deck. Everyone else with the exception of the Night auditor was beyond hospitable...

Our stay started off great--staff were extremely personable, room was cleaned thoroughly, and things seemed to be going well. As we got settled in, we started noticing some things that were irritating...we could hear the room either next to us or above us flushing the toilet. Weird, not a huge deal though.

Saturday night after returning from a local event, my boyfriend requested a late check-out. The front desk agent said that check-out was at 12p, but she could put us down for 1p. Then she said, "housekeeping isn'tt going to get to y'all until around 12 anyway, so you'll be good." OKAY, COOL. We went to sleep knowing good and well that we weren't under ANY obligation to rush. Sunday morning we're sleeping when we hear banging and someone saying "HOUSEKEEPING!" Now, let's remember that I can hear the next room's toilet flushing, so we couldn't tell if they were banging on our door or the next one. They bang again yelling "HOUSEKEEPING," and my boyfriend starts getting up and getting dressed to open the door, when the door OPENS and the person starts to walk in. We yell out, "HANG ON," and the person apologizes and backs out. Wanting to know why our door is being banged on at 9:30a, AFTER requesting a LATE check-out, AND having the DND sign on the door, we learn that the housekeeping staff was told that we were, "already checked out." That's strange considering being told check-outs at 12, we have a late check-out at 1p, AND having a DND sign up.

For the rest of the morning with us being in and out of the room, because we AT LEAST have until 12, we kept getting asked if were "out yet," are we "still in there," and did we "pay for another night?" Not to be a complete and utter snob, but after working in a hotel for 5 years as a manager, I am really surprised that the housekeeping staff don't know to NOT rush a guest out. Furthermore, the lack of communication between the front desk and housekeeping can really create a negative situation. I get urgency and high turnovers, but the housekeeping staff I supervised wouldn't have DARED to rush a guest out--or make a guest feel like they need to...