Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel & Convention Center — Hotel in Vinings

I checked in on a Sunday and paid for parking. As a long term guest I did not return to my car until Thursday morning only to find it had been towed by the hotel. The hotel security lacks adequate controls and fails to follow its policies and procedures regarding guests who have entrusted their vehicles with the hotel. The hotel was having one parking lot repaved and I guess really needed my car removed for the work to be done, so they had it towed.

5 points of failure by the hotel. First no one when I checked in told me the lot would be closed for construction (although all hotel staff was notified by email the Friday before I arrived). There was no signage in the hotel lobby that the lot would be closed. Security for the hotel did not obtain proper authorization to tow my car from the Director or General Manager on-site. Security followed the directions of the tow company instead of their own policies.

Prior to my trip, I printed out a phone number and address I needed for work and placed it in my dashboard. The tow company told security to call this phone number to determine who’s car it was before towing it. I still don’t understand why security would listen to the tow company or think the owner of the car would leave their phone number in the dashboard. I don’t understand why security would not check the parking receipt in the dashboard or license plate with the front desk to determine the guest’s phone number prior to towing the vehicle.

I don’t understand why security would have my car towed to a tow lot 30 min from the hotel instead of towing my car the other parking lot on-site, which was not under construction?

When I spoke to security about my car, they showed me a picture of the phone number I had printed in the dash and said “we called this number several times and left messages before towing your car but no one ever called us back.” I’m sure because the phone was a business located in New Hampshire. Security then blamed me the problem saying I should have never parked in the lot because it was closed. This further added to my frustration and made me feel like it was my fault. I asked if the lot was closed then, why did my parking pass allow me to enter the lot (the parking pass requires the guest the scan a bar code to enter the gate). If the lot was to be closed the hotel should have disabled the gates.

The lack of security and the hotel to follow their own policies or implement basic controls resulted in me staying in Atlanta for an additional 2 days. I was unable to get home to see my kids Thursday and arrived home very late on Friday night. This entire situation in turn forced me to work all day on Saturday because I had an important report due on Monday (which I had planned to prepare on Friday but unable to because I spent Thursday afternoon trying to figure out where my car had been towed and Friday going to retrieve my car).

The hotel ultimately paid to have my car released from the tow impound and provided me a comped room for the additional night I had to stay in Atlanta and I think anyone would agree this is the least they could do based on their lack of controls or ability to follow their own policies.

This is a frustrating incident because the hotel staff is generally friendly and helpful overall but if you park your car, ensure you check with the front desk if there is any planned construction in the parking lots.

Marriott’s corporate risk management has been little help to date. I’ve asked them to escalate this issue to guest services or their loyalty team and they told me they won’t do it because it won’t help the situation.

I really only want Marriott’s corporate office to do the right thing and make it right for this long time loyalty member. I think some concessions for my bad guest experience and the hotel’s failures to follow their policies or implement basic controls would be appropriate. It’s the time I spent retrieving my car, missing my kids for 2 nights and working on Saturday which is where I think they should make it right by going above and...

It's not often I give a bad or lengthy review for a place. So, sit down and grab some tea, as this is going to be a long one. This venue does not know how to handle or run events and you should not be giving them your business whether you are a fan convention, concert, wedding, or just a Braves fan looking for a place to stay after a game.

But first some background is in order - I've been at this hotel close to ten times, primarily for a fan convention. For those of you who are unaware fan conventions can potentially be rowdy twenty four hour affairs but tend to largely be attended by good people, mostly. The flip side to all of this is that they are amongst the most lucrative events a hotel can host - doing things like reserving conference rooms for 72 hours straight, something not even business events will do. As well as book every room and order a lot of food and drink.

Some conventions are the difference between a profitable and unprofitable year for the hotels that host them. The city of Indianapolis' budget is balanced in part on the back of GenCon, and I can't think of a scenario where this event doesn't fill a substantial hole in the hotel and nearby business' budgets.

In previous years the hotel and its staff were enthusiastic to welcome the event back, and in general seemed to have a good time with it despite the stress it would put on them and any of the clean up or damage was easily covered by the sheer pile of money brought in.

Some very popular events places can get close to fire code and be very crowded as people not attending the event become attracted to the party that develops. Naturally most venues will act in a responsible manner, allowing only individuals with badges or a room key access and having security on hand to make sure things don't get too crowded or rowdy.

That is not what this venue chose to do, and in part this was supposedly due to an outside group harassing the hotel manager. And while this is reprehensible and the persons involved should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law - it is not something to extend to punishing the event.

To bring things full circle, the hotel decided the best thing to do was to try to treat every attendee with a level of hostility I don't expect to come from hotel staff. To try to crowd control by using wristbands more at home at a hospital in a confusing and half enforced system with poorly trained security, going so far as to tell hotel guests that if the bands were lost or broken they would need to pay upwards of $300 to continue to access the room they had legally paid for.

In all the years I have attended dozens of events of this type, the only thread of consistency I can find for poor actions on the part of hotels is that they always seem to be Marriott. I am unsure if this is due to poor best practices sharing, how they train management, or some other thing entirely. They do sometimes get it right and the fact that there is another Marriott within a half hour drive that is able to get everything right with a considerably larger and much rowdier crowd speaks volumes for corporate dysfunction.

It’s not even a complicated solution either - the hotel and event need to reach an agreement on a reasonable cap for number of badges sold and admittance beyond the front desk requires a badge or a hotel room key. Beyond a handful of additional security, nothing else needs to be done.

If you've managed to make it this far, I would implore you dear reader to reconsider this hotel as a venue of choice. They've demonstrated an inability to handle large events, and treat them as more of an inconvenience than anything. If you must stay in the area, there are other hotels within walking distance. Even the other Marriott property, the Sheraton Suites, was much friendlier and did a better job of things.

I hope you have found this review informative and entertaining, and should you be a member of any hotel staff that hosts or is considering hosting large fan gatherings that you have learned...

First off Hotel was nice and spacious. Rooms were big and bed was very comfortable. Location is reasonably close to the Battery, Truist park and the Mall. That being said...the service was not what it should be for the price you pay. Issues started from check in. We reserved 3 rooms for our 3 night stay. Two rooms were supposed to be adjoining. Request was sent to the hotel at time if booking and confirmation of request was confirmed by the hotel the week before check in. At check in I was told by Madison that they have adjoining rooms but " it doesnt work that way" Never got an explaination of what that meant. Was told we "pretty much" have rooms on the same floor and "pretty much" are next to each other and rooms will " pretty much" be ready by 4pm. We checked back at the desk at 4pm and we told by Oosha that rooms were not ready and it would be at least an hour or more. Oosha again stated there were not adjoining rooms available. The manager over heard the conversation and came over. He looked at the computer, clicked a few keys and voila there were 2 adjoining rooms and a third room right next to them AND they were available right now. Oosha just stumbled all over herself trying to justify telling me there were not adjoining rooms and trying to make us wait another hour or more. Kudos to this manager. However, we discovered in one room the phone did not work because we tried to call down for more blankets because the room was freezing and the thermostat wasn't working. So I went to the adjoining room to call guest services. I was on hold for about 5 min then when it finally started ringing it immediately went to a busy signal. I just walked down to the lobby to request more blankets and pillows and let them know the phone wasn't working and we weren't able to control the AC. I was hold by Oosha they had a shortage of blankets do to being sold out the night before so she gave me some sheets and said she would bring up blankets when laundry got caught up and to just use my cellphone to call the desk if I needed anything. Four hours later I called to request the blankets again and was told they gave the last blanket out 30 minutes ago. The person identifying themselves as "the desk supervisor" said laundry was supposed to bring them more blankets but they never did and laundry would not open again until 6am. BUT she could give me more sheets. Needless to say all the adults and children in that room froze that night. The next morning I spoke with Alex at the front desk. He was very apologetic and to his credit did not make excuses for all that went down the day before. He had the engineer up to our room within 30 min and gave us more blankets. However when the engineer showed up he had a space heater. I explained that the thermostat could not be adjusted and no matter how high we turned it up it just stayed freezing in the room. He was saying something about all the rooms were like that because the hotel was working on the boiler and there was no way to heat the rooms. I explained I didnt want to use the heat function just wanted the AC around 72 and not 63. I told him our other 2 rooms worked fine. After about 30 minutes of going back and forth he finally called his supervisor and after another 20 minutes he found the problem, went and got the part and voila the AC was working properly. Earlier when I had spoke to Alex at the front desk I also told him I was a Bonvoy member but I wasnt getting the free wifi. He connected by member number to the rooms and told me to just sign in using the $12.95 option and any charges would be removed. After reviewing by bill when we got home I noticed the charges were not removed. I do not want to deal with these people anymore so...I guess I'm paying for it. We usually stay at the Omni when we got to Atlanta but thought we would try...