Residence Inn by Marriott San Diego Downtown/Bayfront — Hotel in San Diego

Residence Inn San Diego Downtown / Bayfront is across the street from a beautiful waterfront, has modern rooms, free Wi-Fi, a gym, pool, free breakfast, meeting rooms, access for those with a disability throughout the building and has onsite customer service that truly cares about your visit. The downsides I see at this hotel is that there are no in room safes to protect valuables and very limited cellular service for my phone in any of their hotel rooms.

This hotel location is one of my favorites in San Diego and I travel there regularly. It opened in April of 2016, so it is new compared to most other hotels in the area. The views from most rooms are great. You can see the waterfront or downtown very clearly. There is another equally sized building under construction on one side of the hotel, that partially blocks the views of some rooms. For a city hotel they have an abundance rooms with amazing views.

Just leaving the lobby and being able to start and end your day running or walking, on a wide bayfront path just across the street, is what I like the most. The rooms are modern, with concrete walls and open concept floor plans for standard rooms. As you move up in price, there are rooms with kitchen areas and separate bedrooms. All rooms have a refrigerator and microwave. Having the opportunity to keep daily refreshments cold is an amenity of great importance to me.

For the most part, this hotel is the quietest hotel I have stayed at in San Diego. It also provides one of the best free breakfasts in the area. Eggs, waffles, cereals, coffee, etc. with a large table seating area that is kept very clean. Their hotel gym is also one of the best in San Diego. Very open, lots of natural light and kept clean. The pool area is very relaxing and has sun coverage most of the day due its outside location on the 5th floor. Most days end with me sitting on their observation deck enjoying the view of the harbor with a cold drink from my fridge. Gorgeous harbor sunsets.

There are some not so good issues, requiring me to take away a five-star rating in a serious way.

Room Safes: There are no in room security safes – all urban hotels today should provide the means to safeguard personal belongings. Due to a 13 % increase in non-residential burglaries in San Diego last year, and life experiences with theft in other hotels, I am very disappointed. I cannot recommend this hotel to military officials needing to protect personal and professional items; or any of the thousands of civil servants who are required to travel and secure their ‘protection equipment’; or to corporate employees having to safeguard their electronics; or to international travelers having to protect their travel documents and medications.

If I travel with personal property that I need to keep secured at this hotel I use my Timbuk2. They designed a great pack that always has my back.

Cellular Service: -Extremely limited- This building is largely constructed of concrete and steel. This creates very poor capabilities for cellular networks to communicate. Marriott has chosen not to provide the capability for enhanced cellular communication networking in their brand-new building. Mostly, it is when you enter any of the hotel rooms. This requires you to use their free unsecured slow Wi-Fi or pay Marriott for a somewhat faster Wi-Fi to use many mobile phone features.

Looking for a new modern place to stay, across from one of the greatest waterfront walk paths on the West Coast, stay at this Residence Inn San Diego...

April 2023 Review - Not often I get to do a follow-up review on a previously visited Marriott, but here I am with updates!

Hotel Parking - I previously detailed the odd parking situation which, for the most part, has been fixed (kinda). I'd recommend parking in the traffic circle in front of the hotel to get your keys BEFORE pulling into the parking garage. Otherwise, you'll need to park, come to the ground floor, check-in, then maze your way back through the hotel to the parking garage. The parking garage elevator now has a hotel key sensor that allows access to the hotel after hours. Unfortunately, it does not work with the mobile app key card. Parking is $40/night or $60 with valet service. For the DIY option, stick to the 3.0 or 4.0 levels in the garage.

Check-in and Customer Service - I have never experienced consistent sub-par customer service from ANY property I've stayed with previously....and I'm lifetime Elite status with Marriott and this was my second time staying at the property. After the previous visit, I was sitting on the fence regarding this location based on the odd parking arrangement, hotel access from the garage, cleanliness, and difficulties with the elevators. While it appears as though everything has improved except the elevators, unfortunately, terrible customer service with no follow-up from management is a hard pass for me regarding future visits..

The Room - Still not a fan of the office chair/desk situation in these rooms. The office chair was not tall enough to allow me to functionally use my computer without feeling like I was throwing my shoulders out (bad ergonomics). As an alternative, they have a dinner tray table, but it's too low to use as a computer stand. If you're attempting to get some work done, you'll be better off setting up shop on the 5th floor across from the cafeteria or worst-case scenario, in the lobby.

The Elevators - The hotel is dual branded (also operating as a Springhill Suites) which translates into short- and long-term guests getting log-jammed trying to get out in the morning and get in during the evening. If there are any big events occurring during the dates you plan on staying, keep this point in serious consideration. You WILL end up waiting a few minutes on an elevator that may arrive full.

Overall, the hotel is visually appealing and the full breakfast is definitely a positive selling point. While it was nice that most of what I outlined in my previous review has been fixed, I don’t patronize locations where the front-facing staff is patronizing and disrespectful. There are way too many other Marriott locations in the area that may offer a better customer service...

I’ve been a rewards member for a number of years and stayed at Residence Inns before. The downtown bay front was a very pleasant surprise. The hotel was designed as a contemporary high rise with plenty of glass to give the rooms a nice view of the city and bay. We used the valet parking option with costs about what you would expect in a downtown area, but was very efficient and well run. The check in process went smoothly as our reservation was quickly pulled up and key cards ready. The associate gave us some very good recommendations for local golf courses which we took advantage of during our stay. A quick ride to the 14 floor gave us a beautiful panoramic view of the bay when the elevator opened via a full glass wall opposite the doors. A quick walk around the corner and we found our rooms ready for us to occupy. The rooms were surprisingly large and nicely decorated. The colors and finishes are more on the contemporary side, but very comfortable none the less. The bathroom offered a very large flat floor walk-in shower rather than a tub with a shower. We really liked that feature. A king bed was also in our room which proved to be very comfortable. Our room featured floor to ceiling windows that looked down on the downtown area on one side and the bay on the other. The hotel was fairly busy, however, when we retired for the evening, there was no extraneous noise coming into our room.
All Residence Inns have a complimentary breakfast which I have found to be mostly the same across this particular brand. The breakfast offerings were very much the same as what would be experienced in other Residence Inns. The food is plentiful although probably not up to the standard of a breakfast restaurant. The breakfast room is quite large and has a lot of seating.
When leaving for the day, we were approached by a very nice concierge who offered us a good selection of recommended restaurants and a discount card for those locations. The property is located directly across the street from the water which offers all sorts of opportunities to eat, walk, sight see, exercise (bikes, scooters, jogging, etc) . The location is just about perfect to get around the downtown area. The price for the hotel was excellent considering the location, condition, service and experience. We will probably return...