Residence Inn by Marriott San Diego Del Mar — Hotel in San Diego

First, a few good things. The room is clean, the bed is nice and it has an impressive kitchenette for a hotel room. The shower is pretty cool, even if it leaks all over the floor. Speaking of, the shampoo, conditioner and body wash they provide is awesome. Yeah, that's about it.

Now, we've stayed in many hotels over the years and this is among our worst stays, for a few specific reasons relating to our reason for staying. We're in town a specific reason that pretty much requires us to just stay in the room for a whole day. The plan was to just chill and watch tv. After all, the place comes with free HBO, Showtime, a bunch of streaming options, free wifi. Nope. Well, they do have those options, they just dont seem to work very well, if at all. The streaming services might let you go through their menus, but once you start playing something it'll be constantly buffering or outright crashing. The TV even just turned off on it's own a few times. The TV channels seem to work okay, but the guide wont show what's on half of the channels. Who watches TV anymore anyway? We thought we'd just use the wifi on our iPad. Not so fast, they have two types of wifi. "Free Wifi" and "Premium Wifi" One for "email and web browsing", one for "streaming". Guess which one cost $4.95 a day?

Theres a few things you can do to try to rectify and bypass these annoyances. For the TV issue, just keep doing hard resets on both the TV and the service box mounted to the side of the dresser. That means unplugging and replugging them whenever it acts up too much. Expect to this multiple times per day. For the wifi issue, it appears to be just a scam of sorts. When you log into the free wifi, itll look at everything you do in a browser and not allow streaming from YouTube, Amazon video, etc. But, it doesn't seem to effect standalone apps. I think they're hoping you just pay before you try and wont be the wiser. So, just log in and use your apps.

Couple all this with the fact that there is not much around here aside from an AmPm around the corner and a super expensive steakhouse about a half mile away. Hopefully you drove, rented a car or expect to take an Uber everywhere. Nothing is in walking decent distance other than the steakhouse. The hotel has a "market" by the front desk, but of course everything is at least double priced. There's a cool view of I-5 from your window if you're into that I guess.

Disclaimer: This may be a harsher review than maybe deserved, but our stay seemed to be filled with constant feelings of disappointment and defeat. They really need to fix their...

I stayed at the Residence in with my 80 year old mother and 3 cats when we were displaced from our home due to water damage in our home in August 2023. It has taken me a long time to be able to write this review because my mother died a few months after this experience and at the time I was so angry I was not able to put my experience in a review. Our insurance placed us at the hotel and was paying for the room. It was the worst experience I've ever had in a hotel. We were having an extended stay due to the water damage in our home and we would schedule cleaning when either I or my mother could be present so that the cats could be monitored. Depending on the cleaning person, some outright refused to close the exterior door while cleaning, which was incredibly frustrating and was not explained. We stayed at the inn for 2.5 weeks when we were evicted and given 2 hours to leave. My mother was notified of the eviction via our insurer. No hotel employee spoke directly with us to inform us of their wild decision. When my mother went to speak with someone to understand what happened, the manager saw her, and ran to his office to hide. He made her wait (hopping she would go away?) and when he finally did speak with her he told her that she had slammed the door of the room in an employees face, we had 2 hours to get out no exceptions. When my mother expressed her frustration by saying it was bullsh*t he wagged his finger at her and scolded her like she was a child. She was an 80 year old frail woman who was embarrassed, frustrated, and confused. She requested time so that I could help her when I finished work at the school where I teach high school. He said no. None if this makes any sense. It was impossible to slam the room door as the doors were equipped with soft close mechanisms, nor did my mother have the strength to do so. Thankfully my principal was generous and allowed me to leave my classes mid class to go to the hotel and assist my mother to pack and get our cats out of the room. When I tried to speak with the manager, he refused to speak with me. What a cowardly way to run a business and a horrible way to treat someone who had been displaced from her home and was undergoing the stress of the repair. I will NEVER stay at this hotel. I will and have told friends looking for a place to stay near us to avoid this hotel at all costs. Our neighbor needed a place to stay when a water pipe broke in her home and she chose to stay further away in La Jolla to...

From the hundreds of stays I’ve had with the Marriott brand over the last 15 years, Residence Inn Del Mar has by far been the most disappointing experience I’ve had to-date.

For starters, this hotel’s policy is to provide housekeeping every 7 days, due to COVID. Though everyone is trying to navigate these unprecedented times as best they can, this is very difficult to manage, especially for a family. They did offer to take out the trash and provide towels when requested, but that was something you had to initiate. A simple daily or every other day call to check in would have gone a long way. Not once did the staff check on how our stay was, or if we needed anything.

Which brings me to the professionalism and courteousness, or lack thereof, of the staff. Overall, this hotel’s staff was extremely unwelcoming and at times, borderline rude. For example, in one interaction with one of the managers, I made a point to say thank you 3 times, and not once did he respond with “you’re welcome,” or any kind of acknowledgment that he is interacting with a guest.

Perhaps, none of this should be all too surprising since the General Manager seemed clueless when it comes to the basics of descent customer service. Our room was on the 2nd floor, directly facing the entrance, where there is the heaviest foot traffic, which greatly compromises privacy. I inquired about whether or not there were any other rooms we could be moved into. She noted that they were fully booked, and that they do not have many options other than moving me to a higher floor.

Before I could respond (and to my shock) she then proceeded to say that I was more than welcome to try the Marriott hotel across the street! Cherry on top — she noted that the Residence Inn was corporate hotel, while the other Marriott one is a franchisee. If this is the level of service we should expect from a “corporate” hotel, that is extremely concerning.

Unfortunately, they seem to be getting fully booked regardless of how poor the service is. So, cutting costs and maximizing profit is at the top of mind. Being in as competitive of an industry as this is, this is a very short-sighted approach that will inevitably catch up with them sooner rather than later.

I hope Marriott takes a hard look at this hotel’s staff, and at the very least, gives them much needed training on the basics of working in the service industry and interacting with their paying guests, let alone their most...