Courtyard by Marriott Houston North/Shenandoah — Hotel in Shenandoah

Seemingly decent Courtyard, which I expected from the Marriott brand. What I experienced was actually quite the opposite. The first couple days, ants were all over my bathroom, even getting inside the bottles for my vitamins. Eh, I shrugged it off, tossed the vitamins, and told the front desk. Maintenance came by the following day to clean the bathroom and spray pesticides (I’m assuming).

So a few days go by, and I start to have red marks on my shoulders and upper back. What is my immediate thought? “It’s a rash.” I mean, it’s Texas and I’m not used to the fields/weeds/pollen/etc. So I chalk it up to allergies or the idea that I used cheap detergent to wash my clothes and had an allergic reaction. Another day or so goes by and I notice what look like bites on my hands and forearms. So I see the medical staff at work for a quick exam. Seconds go by, and they tell me, “those are bed bug bites.”

I panic. I leave work early and head back to panic more as I frantically search my bed. Check the frame: nope. Check the pillows: nope. Check the bed skirt and lift the mattress: nope. Then I’m inclined to check out the faux headboard they have on the bed, which in reality is just firm pillows with fancier pillow cases.

I see dark spots as I start to look closer. Yep, I see bugs. Dozens of them. Varying sizes. I panic. I take pictures and video and run out to the front desk. A quick google search shows they are clearly bed bugs, combined with the bites, and the way they were nested in the edges of the headboard, I tell the front desk clerk the same thing. She’s clueless. Not because she’s unintelligent, but she’s clearly 1) new and 2) inexperienced. I try not to get furious with her. I am panicking because I travel in less than 12 hours at that point, and I will need to wash and dry the things I will wear repeatedly in order to kill the bugs (I say dry since I called Clark Pest Control and text them the video, confirming they were bed bugs and told me to put the bare minimum items in the dryer for an extended period on high heat). Oh yeah, and Clark Pest Control told me the varying stages of lifecycles present in the video suggested the bugs had been there for 4-8 weeks.

I’m even more furious. I ask to speak to the manager. I’m told the GM and assistant managers are out. I ask her to call them anyways. Instead of speaking to me directly, you know since they are equipped to handle the situation based on experience alone, they use the clerk as a proxy and make her panic as well. She moves me rooms. Well what about my stuff? It’s likely infested with bed bugs! She shoves free boxes of detergent at me and a roll of quarters to wash my stuff. We are talking thousands of dollars of military gear. I still ask to speak to the manager. She’s supposed to call me because she’s on travel. The process already shows there is no precedence for this type of situation, and there is literally no sense of urgency. I wait around and talk to the Food & Beverage Manager, who didn’t have say in this realm but assured me I would be taken care of. I wash my items. Dry them for hours. Get some sleep. Catch a lyft and ditch thousands of dollars in items that were cloth to avoid bringing bed bugs home or on the airplane.

The following day, nothing heard from the manager. So I call back to the front desk. A little bit of attitude is received when I explain who I am, the situation, and that I would like to speak to the manager. The front desk clerk says she will contact her manager. A few hours later, I receive a call. It’s the GM. Apologetic, as expected, and lines it out for me: until they “verify” the bed bugs based on the report provided from a pest control company’s inspection, they can’t do anything. She mentions some mediocre points or refunding my stay, but that’s irrelevant since it was purchased utilizing per diem that isn’t actually my money. It’s just my horrible experience and my personal/work items that had to be destroyed. I did get a call confirming: they...

I booked 5 nights, May 28 - June 2, for my adult daughter and myself at Courtyard Houston North/Shenandoah. The 5 night stay was booked with 3 separate reservations because the type of room we wanted, a double queen room, was not available on Saturday night. So, we booked a double queen for May 28, a single king for May 29, and a double queen for May 30 - June 2. Upon check-in on Friday, May 28, the front desk associate, Saulo, saw that my daughter was on crutches with a broken foot. He was very polite and kind and checked to see if anything had become available so that we could stay in the same double queen room for all 5 nights. The answer was yes, for which we were extremely grateful. He combined our 3 original reservations into one so that we would not have to check out and check in on Saturday and again on Sunday.

On Saturday, May 29, we left the hotel at 12:15p. We left a “do not disturb” sign on the door, and left our personal toiletries (including toothbrushes and night guard) out on the bathroom counter. Later that evening, I received an email time stamped 2:17 stating our belongings had been moved by house keeping to another room. Email can be seen on TripAdvisor under “Violated” due to Google character limit.

No attempt was made to contact me so that I could repack and move our belongings myself! No phone call! No voicemail! No text! No advance email! Instead, the cleaning staff were instructed to enter our room and touch our personal belongings! And, to do this while claiming to be following COVID-19 safety procedures!

Okay, this was upsetting, but unfortunately, the situation gets worse! Upon entering the single king room at approximately 10:30-10:45p, we check to make sure all of our belongings had been moved. We found our toiletries laying on the bathroom counter, my daughter’s suitcase and items she had left out in the first room, a couple of items I had hung in the closet, and my two suitcases which were empty because I had unpacked them and had organized everything in the two drawers provided in the first room thinking I was going to be there for 5 nights. However, the contents of those drawers had not been moved! That means most of my clothing (including my sleepwear) and all of my charging devices (including my very expensive hearing aids charger) were left behind.

Hoping to find my belongings, I immediately reported this to the front desk associates on duty and requested that one of them contact the hotel guests who were now in that room to check the drawers. The response was, 1) “that can’t be, the cleaning staff disinfect every surface of the rooms and disinfect the drawers inside and out,” and 2) “no, we cannot contact the guests... we are not allowed to disturb hotel guests.” (Am I not a hotel guest?) I then ask to speak with the manager on duty, Gina Zinnie, who was not there. The associate calls Gina and is told that under no circumstances is a hotel guest to be disturbed by a hotel employee and that I would have to wait until the next morning for hotel personnel to check the room.

End result, I had to disturb (wake up) the guests in that room to retrieve my belongings, which had indeed been left in the two drawers by the hotel cleaning staff. (Side note: an almost full re-corked bottle of wine that had been given to me as a gift Friday evening was not recovered.)

My privacy was violated. My sense of security and safety was destroyed. My confidence in Courtyard cleanliness standards is gone.

A contributing factor to this fiasco is that hotel management allowed the hotel to be overbooked for Saturday night. I overheard front desk associates frantically trying to find other hotel accommodations for reservations that could not be honored because of overbooking.

I have been a repeat guest at this hotel for several years pre-Covid and have never had such a poor experience. In fact, I always had pleasant stays. This was beyond disappointing. Courtyard Houston North/Shenandoah has become very...

I got assigned to work in Huntsville, however, due to the storms, displaced residents are staying in the hotels and so I had to go outside of Huntsville to find a room. My best friend and I searched and settled on this Courtyard (we were between here and Aloft). I was truly excited to have found a Courtyard in the area that seemed to be very well-appointed and clean and having just checked out of the Courtyard in Denton, I had high hopes for this one. However...

As an elite Bonvoy member with a corporate cc, I have many hotel options when I travel for work and stay for weeks at a time. It's very disappointing when I choose to book a stay at a Marriott property only to neither be recognized for my membership, loyalty and patronage, nor offered an upgrade, bonus points or even an item from the market. I don't understand why hotels carry the Marriott name if it will not earnestly welcome Marriott members.

So, the front desk clerk doesn't speak English well, as someone else noted, and when I asked about any upgrades, she promptly went and got the manager. The kicker is that they both returned to the front desk and proceeded to look at me. Insert crickets She couldn't even communicate to him why she went and got him. SMH.

Then, probably as dispassionately and unaffected as he could, he responded to my inquiry about upgrades/ complimentary breakfast, initially, with a shake of the head and then just, "no."

On a good note, my reservation was promptly canceled; without there even being a bat of an eyelash between me asking and me being presented with a zero balance receipt. There was no, "I'm sorry this didn't work out for you," no, "I'm sorry but we don't offer upgrades or perks of any kind because of a-b-c." Nothing. Both manager and front desk clerk just walked off. I guess they prefer to respond to negative reviews than to communicate with guests in person.

This clearly doesn't need to be called an anything by Marriott. Please fix it.

UPDATE FOR A LEARNING OPPORTUNITY: I can understand room upgrades not being available, however, complimentary breakfast for elite Bonvoy members or even a welcome and/or item from the market is certainly within the hotel's purview to provide regardless of capacity. In fact, I received a coupon for breakfast at the Courtyard that I stayed in for just 3 days prior to arriving in Shenandoah for a 3 1/2 week stay (at minimum). I guess there's a lot to...