Seattle Marriott Waterfront — Hotel in Seattle

As I mentioned to my wife, this hotel is "cheap chic" IMO and nothing about it is offensive, or distasteful, but it's certainly overpriced for the amount of space in our double queen room with a half balcony, as well as the relatively cheap finishes throughout. I'm pretty sure "half" wasn't mentioned in the room description before the word balcony, but at least the sliding door opens all the way and you can walk out onto the balcony. The room finishes are so cheap there isn't even a soft close toilet seat. The obligatory valet parking is too expensive at $58/day and it de-incentivizes customers to tip the valets. However, the valets we interacted with have been exceedingly cheerful and helpful, even when they're clearly understaffed at times. Another perk is the $25/day credit towards in-house food and drink options, and the pizza options are all around $25 (although our Margherita at $22 was fairly underwhelming), the salads are around $20, and a decent sized box of fries are $10 (garlic are $12), so there are some relatively cost effective food options here to leverage that $25 credit towards. It's mid-March and raining, so we didn't try out the pool, but this review is focused on the lodging mostly. The other perk the hotel offers guests is two tickets to "Wings Over Washington", a waterfront, tourist theme-park style ride with moving seats and an I-max type screen that is pretty cool if you can look past the cheesy early 2000's resolution and CGI bits. My recommendation is to NOT pay for extra tickets for the ride and just choose two family members who are really interested to go. It's not worth paying the $24 ticket price. But, I appreciate Marriott giving guests two $24 tickets. The room and beds were clean when we arrived, and while small, the bathroom was also clean with a basic layout. I just didn't appreciate the toilet paper roller being wall-mounted behind my left shoulder while seated on the toilet when there was a good mounting location just to the right of me on the wall next to the fixed glass shower door partition, which wouldn't have required dexterity to get to the toilet roll. Folks with bad backs would certainly have an issue getting to the toilet roll. The non-carpeted floors throughout the room is a plus, and the room is relatively sound-proof. There's enough electrical outlets for a family stay, even if you forget to bring a power strip. Location: location for me was mid for several reasons. Sure it's on the waterfront, but it's in a very quiet area and pretty far from Pike's Place and the other waterfront attractions. You might be thinking, "But wait, that sounds great! A nice quiet place to rest up!" Sure, I was trying to rationalize with that apparent "pro", at first, but it kinda changes the Waterfront Marriott experience into more of a "resort" style stay because it encourages you to stay at the hotel: maybe you decide at various times that it's better to just stay in the hotel, rather than get your car from the valet, or get the fam all prepared to trek several blocks, to get to fairly-priced dining, or seek out other entertainment available on the waterfront (about 1/3 mile away walking), or go closer to the bustling downtown area, which is annoying to drive around and hard to navigate with all the one-way streets. If you do want to drive somewhere, you'll have to pay for parking at any number of city parking lots, or if you take an Uber from the hotel, you'll have to tack on that extra cost to the valet parking fee... Get the predicament? In the end I think a hotel closer to the downtown area is better after all. While picturesque, the waterfront is a day-trip excursion, rather than a multi-day attraction IMO. Lastly, there's no Starbucks at this Marriott, which was surprising and lame. That's typically all I need, a convenient Starbucks to get coffee at in the morning, which sets me up perfectly to go about my day with the caffeine and possibly some small bites to get going. Two stars because this is simply over-priced and underwhelming, although...

I left this same review on Trip Advisor:

Where to even begin. I'm a Marriott Bonvoy member and used to stay in these hotels exclusively. I was a Marriott superfan.

I purchased a $500 gift card for my mom to take a break from being primary caregiver for my sick dad. She decided not to use it and gave it back to me, so my bestfriend and I booked a "staycation" in our home town of Seattle.

We went to a show at the Paramount, booked reservations at Aqua, and a room at this Marriott.

After the show, things went a little sideways with the Paramount parking garage so we ended up having to cancel our reservation at Aqua and decided to eat in the hotel restaurant after checking in and dropping our stuff off.

The restaurant only offers sit down service until 1pm so our only option is get food in the lounge. The waitstaff was rude and dismissive. My friend and I gave up a table so a group of four could sit together and moved to another area. I saw everyone around us getting their orders taken so I went to the bar to ask to order.

The server handed me two menus and walked away. The options were pub food but we were starving, so after waiting 15 minutes for someone to take our order, I went back to the bar. The server snapped at me that they only served food to people who were sitting at tables with candles. She had walked past us half a dozen times, I had told her we wanted to order food, she handed me the menus knowing we wanted to order food, but she chose to not say anything about this until I asked?

Maybe she was having a bad night but her attitude was bad. As a former fine-dining server, blaming my customer for my inability to use my words or communicate wouldn't have gone well for me.

We finally get another open table, and place our order. Two cheeseburgers. I ordered mine medium rare and my friend ordered hers well done. Mine was raw, hers was burned. I generally eat cuts of meat rare/blue rare but not burgers. This was inedible so we just gave up, paid, and left.

Sunday we had a hooky day - literally just lay in the beds, did masks, and laughed a lot, but the disappointments kept coming. We decided to order room service. I don't know what we were thinking after our lounge experience but the food showed up in a to go bag with no condiments or seasoning. Everything was cold and the pappardelle that I ordered was inedible - again, another $130 down the drain for bad food and poor service.

The rooms were nothing special, the coffee was bad, the staff was tepid, if not downright rude... but for FOUR HUNDRED DOLLARS A NIGHT I would expect them to try a little more.

This location gets a lot of cruise traffic, but that's really no excuse for the post-pandemic sloppiness I've seen from this Marriott.

I am a frequent business traveler and have been staying at Marriott's for over 20 years - this visit is making me question my brand loyalty.

I've stayed at the W recently and it's even worse, so I'm assuming it's a Marriott problem and not a this-location problem (except for that...

Overpriced unless you value access to the cruise ship terminal.

The only real selling feature of this hotel is that it’s directly across the street from the cruise ship terminal. If this is a critical feature to you then this is your hotel. If not, you are overpaying to stay here.

The hotel is often one of, if not, the most expensive Marriott property in Seattle. However, nothing about this hotel says luxury. If feels like a Double Tree or some other mid tier chain. The Westin, the W, even the Renaissance in Seattle feel more high end and all are cheaper.

Over the years I’ve stayed in most of Seattle’s Marriott hotels but not the Waterfront. Looking for a quick two day get away I decided to book the Waterfront and splurged on their best room.

Getting to the hotel was the first red flag that I’d overpaid. While the Alaska Way Viaduct has been removed, the Seattle waterfront is still a construction zone. The mapping apps got totally lost trying to route us to the hotel through a sea of blocked streets and orange pylons.

The next red flag was when we pulled up to valet parking to see no one. After about 30 seconds of waiting and wondering if this hotel had valet someone appeared. While they were friendly I just wasn’t getting the high end hotel vibes I was expecting at this price point.

Next up was the lobby which was equally unimpressive. Mid tier hotel chain grade. Front desk staff did seem nice so that was good. The elevators required no keycard access to get to the floors so there was a security issue there. The newly carpeted but overly brightly lit halls felt cheap. The room was newly remodeled and did have a nice water view but Seattle’s waterfront still feels like a deserted industrial wasteland.

I felt gutted. Here I was looking for and paying high end luxury pricing and staying at a mid tier property at a deserted industrial waterfront. I looked at my partner and he looked at me. Were we really committing to this? We decided no and I did something I’ve never done before: checkout without even spending the night.

We ended up getting billed a one night charge but got a bigger room at a much nicer 5 star hotel in a much more convenient location for 35% less which was preferable to being ripped off.

And in case your wondering, no the rates at this hotel were not high because it was full. We checked in on a Wednesday and they literally had dozens upon dozens of rooms available. It’s just overpriced for what you...