Courtyard by Marriott Fort Walton Beach-West Destin — Hotel in Santa Rosa Island

My family and I stayed at this hotel from March 27th through April 1st, 2016. I am a Marriott Gold member.

This hotel does not really give you the resort experience. It gives you a minimalist hotel experience on a nice beach.

Parking Great parking. Slots are narrow. Watch out for the support posts; nice side mirror scratches. Parking usually fills up by the evening. Some overflow parking near the pool. Well lit.

Hotel Overall very nice. Main floor (1st floor) is very nice and spacious. Lots of nice sitting chairs and TVs to watch.

Concierge The hotel staff not really well versed in local activities. They basically do a Google search for each request rather than have any information available already.

Restaurant Food is usual Courtyard menu. They seem to short staff for breakfast on weekdays; usually one person doing it all. Food was done well and is a nice option for eating in. Lots of breakfast options nearby.

Room Very nice room. We had two queens. Definitely not enough drawers. My wife likes to take out all of her clothes on vacation and put away the luggage. She could not do this in this room. Bathroom is spacious. Shower was nice. The cleaning staff does a great job cleaning up all of the sand your kids will bring into the room.

Pool Nice heated pool. Nice size. No diving board. No pool toys for the kids available from the hotel. The pool bar never seemed to be open. I never asked why but it was never open the entire week I visited. Lots of signs advertising the pool bar but again it never seemed to be opened. No hot tub. Towels provided. The Staff replenished them often. Nice lounge chairs provided. Men and women restrooms available at the pool.

Beach No beach toys available from hotel. Beach chairs and umbrellas can be rented from private vendors that place. The hotel does not provide them or gives you a discount. I think a rental for the whole day was $25. I purchased two chairs and one umbrella at the beach store down the street for about $100 and used them all week. Watch the last step from the access stairs. They need to add another step.

Overall Location Great location. Nice and quiet. Nothing within a quick walking distance. Owner of this hotel also owns the mini-golf down the street. The front desk has discount passes available. The view walking out to the beach is not the greatest but you ignore it...

My Yukon was stolen out of the parking lot at 9:50pm November 12, 2016. No only did the staff do absolutely nothing to help us the next morning when we discovered it, they double charged me for my room! The staff and Manager Patti went into protection mode in case I was going to sue. Three Staff members did tell me that this had happened a couple of months earlier. Patti's comment to me was "I'm sorry YOU had that problem," after I called to tell her that her staff was totally unaccommodating. Then today, I realized that I was charged twice. The hold completed as a transaction then the charge. She did nothing to fix it. Asked me if I wanted a copy of my folio! I have never sued anyone in my life even owning a business. I have stayed at Marriotts dozens of times and have been treated better than this habing a noisy neighbor. These people suck! Corporate America wants to know why people sue them, this is why. A simple gesture of offering to take me to a rental company to get a ride back to Covington, of offering us food from their Starbucks when we had no breakfast or lunch. There were no restaurants in walking distsance. It took my sister until 2:45 in the adternoon to pick us up! It seems they were more concerned with protecting their business against a suit than helping us. Their actions will cause exactly what they were trying to avoid. I have been in business for 25 years and have never been sued because momma taught me how to treat people and make things right!

In your response, you said that "you were very happy to have assisted." This is a lie. You showed the Sheriffs deputy the video of the thief taking my car. You are required to do so by law. Beyond that, YOU DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to assist my family! My car was recovered because of the extreme diligence of a OCSO deputy serving a warrant on a Meth dealer not connected to our car theft! Fortunately for us, they guy who stole our car was visiting said Meth dealer to get a fix and they happened to check our vin number. You did a great job for your corporation. Failed my family terribly. My son is still having nightmares knowing that they know...

Overall, we were satisfied with our stay and would probably stay again.

The check-in process was a bit disjointed. We arrived at approximately 3:45pm and the young man at the front desk seemed as if he were new. He told us our room was not ready yet as check-in time was 4:00pm. He got our cell number and said he would text us as soon as the room was ready. We waited until 4:00 and did not receive a text so we returned to the front desk. A young lady who seemed much more experienced and confident immediately checked us in and gave us an upgraded bay view room. It left us wondering why we had to wait the 15 minutes when it was obvious this room had been ready the whole time. It seemed that this was a training opportunity for the front desk personnel.

When we finally got into our room, we found everything spotlessly clean. The room was quite large, plenty of room for all our stuff. We slept well in the comfortable beds and enjoyed all the space in the large bathroom.

All of the staff at the hotel were friendly, polite and courteous, especially the housekeeping staff on the 3rd floor. They would always greet us and ask us how our stay was going.

The location of the hotel is obviously great, right on the beach. We had no trouble finding a parking spot and the grounds were kept clean and orderly. We only got breakfast at the Bistro once and we enjoyed it. The lobby and public bathrooms were also spotlessly clean. One slight negative is that the elevators seemed extremely slow. Also, the pool is quite small and the poolside bar was never open during our stay. Additionally, the ladies restroom by the pool, while clean, smelled extremely musty and moldy and is possibly water damaged around the door frame.

Altogether, this is a nice hotel with a friendly staff and we...