Renaissance St. Augustine Historic Downtown Hotel — Hotel in Saint Augustine

We had a really fun stay here over a short fall break. The hotel‘s location is amazing and is a quite fun place to stay. You are very close to the Trolley center, Ripley’s, and it is a short walk to get into the old town. We found the property to be quite clean and well kept. Makenna the front desk staff were incredibly kind helpful and accommodating. Our room was quite nice. Very spacious and clean with a beautiful balcony. We were very happy with our location in our room and that alone made the potential for a five star review here. However there were some peculiarities and disappointments that detract from this review. |Well, we loved our room, the layout was a bit odd. For the size of the room there were some areas that were quite cramped such as the bathroom and the bed surround. I also thought it was a bit odd that the bathroom vanity did not have toe space so it made using the sink rather difficult, especially for a child. Some of the light switches were also in odd locations. Overall, though, I cannot complain about the room. It was quite nice. |Our disappointments were outside the room but these add up to detract from the experience. When we arrived, we pulled up to the valet. since I have a disabled parking permit that allows me to park right across the street for free, I asked if we could unload our luggage and have the Bell station take it out to the room. I was told that if we weren’t using the valet for parking that the valet, who typically handles the bags as well would not be able to help us. OK, so I pulled my car up in a temporary location unloaded checked in and went back to move my car. No big deal. But then on the way out I noticed luggage carts that guest were using to transport their items. It would’ve been a nice heads up for the valet to say, oh, we don’t actually have a bell stand, but there are luggage carts inside that you can use if that would be helpful.|The other problem we had was with food service, which we found to be all around quite poor. We had breakfast in the restroom, two mornings. The first morning we had blueberry pancakes, which were quite possibly the worst pancakes we have ever had. There were no blueberries in the pancakes, they were gray, dense, and cold. Virtually inedible. The next day we ordered scrambled eggs. These were similarly horrible. Also, the drinks we ordered were not brought before the food, the salt and pepper did not work and it took over an hour to eat a simple breakfast. The staff there was quite nice, but they seemed overstretched and not well trained. Our last morning we decided not to take a chance on the restaurant and went to the coffee shop in the lobby. Here we ordered some baked goods that were kept cold and had to be microwaved. This sort of ruined them.|For such a beautiful property and such a great location, this hotel has the potential to be so great. But if not for a few disappointments, mostly in the food category, we would indeed have rated this a five star. We would really love to come back, but something really needs to be done about the...

Huge disappointment This stay was definitely a letdown. It was a surprise getaway for my husband’s 70th. We almost always stay at Marriott hotels. The hotel is in a perfect downtown location, beautiful on the outside, with a grand lobby inside. The room however, was a major disappointment. We upgraded to a king room with a terrace balcony. The room was very small, and had poor lighting..very dimly lit, overall drab looking. There was a table with only one chair. There was a couch with stains on it. Our ‘terrace balcony’ overlooked a side street. A hotel guest a few doors down was smoking pot on her balcony. TV remote was not working properly. The shower door would not stay closed. It slid open for the duration of the shower. Ended up keeping it closed by jamming a towel on the runner. We were staying 2 nights and had requested housekeeping.. Our first night we were exhausted and just wanted to go to sleep. Upon getting into bed, the sheets felt rough. They were pilled/old/dinghy, not crisp/fresh/bright white as one would expect from Marriott. The next day housekeeping showed up at 5PM asking whether we still wanted the room cleaned…We declined. That night, upon getting into bed, I noticed long black hairs on the sheets that we did not see the first night. Both my husband and I have short white hair.. This was disgusting and quite frankly disturbing and unacceptable. We covered the sheet with towels. When checking out the following morning, I asked to speak to the manager. She was busy, but did show up 20 minutes later.. I expressed our concern about the sheets and showed her photos. She said she would look into it and call us after she spoke with housekeeping, which she did. She explained new sheets are ordered at certain time points during the year… Exactly what does that mean?…It’s OK to have pilled/dingy sheets on the bed?? Regarding the hairs in the bed, she said the housekeeper and supervisor had checked the room the day before and signed off on it. What was she saying?…That there was no hair on the bed.?! Because there most certainly was, and it absolutely was not ours! She continued to say she would give us a 25% discount off our bill. Nice of her (I think?) But quite honestly, that’s not the point. The point is how unacceptable the condition of the room was in based on everything stated above. This is a Marriott Renaissance property, whose rooms, in our opinion, were not even close to meeting...

The hotel is nice and the location is good but our overall experience was poor. We arrived at 8pm to find out that there was no record of our reservation even though we had a confirmation email and confirmation code. The desk clerk was friendly and tried to accommodate us by offering to book us a room as a walk-in. After completing the transaction she found that that the hotel manager had blocked off several rooms for "cleaning" and they did not have any available rooms with two queen beds as we had requested. The desk clerk advised us that she could not refund our money at that point and would need to speak to her manager to determine what could be done for us. After leaving the desk to speak with the manager by phone she said that she could only offer us a room with a king bed and a roll-away bed. She assured us that the manager was aware of the situation and would be happy to speak with us the following day to compensate us for the inconvenience. We went to her room and waited for the roll-away bed to be delivered and then for linens to be brought to room and handed to me at the door so I could make up my own bed. After all of this, the water in the shower was cold! We checked out at 8am the following morning. I spoke with the desk clerk at check-out (a different person from when we checked in) and explained the experience that we had. She was able to refund the $35 parking fee and assured me that the manager was aware of our experience and that he would reach out to me when he came in later that morning. After waiting for 2 days to hear from Mr. Richard Lowe, General Manager, I called him, left a message and requested a call back to discuss our experience at his hotel. I have currently left 4 voice messages for Mr. Lowe as well as a voice message for Cameron Stinson, Assistant Manager and have yet to hear back from either of them. My night stay at the Marriott Renaissance St. Augustine Historic Downtown Hotel was disappointing but even more disappointing was that the hotel management did not give me the courtesy of responding to my voice messages and follow-up on my experience at...