AC Hotel Washington DC Convention Center — Hotel in Washington

What an odd hotel.

--Pros: ---The Staff is mostly excellent. Very personable, friendly, enthusiastic. We did have one run-in with a morning clerk who literally asked us "what do you want me to to do?" when we stopped by like we were told to to follow up on an issue. And who stared at us like we were insane when we repeated what the night clerk has told us. But otherwise, everyone was great. ----The hotel was clean, with decent Covid-19 measures. ----The king-sized bed was comfortable and had 4 body-sized pillows, which was really nice. --Cons: ----What an odd series of issues. ---First of all, the rooms are laid out and decorated very unnaturally. I don't think the designers had comfort in mind- only showy "modern" designs. There are angles and squares in tiny spaces that would have better benefitted from curves, and oversized furniture that just took up space. ---Our room had a king sized bed. There is a sink in the main area, with a closet and fridge. There is also an enormous desk all along the other wall with a large velvet chair. While these are all well and good, the desk was unnecessarily large for the space and only served to make the space feel extremely cramped. There was also a strange little wobbly side table shoved in between the chair and the sink. ------The bathroom, directly next to the bed, has a SLIDING GLASS DOOR. Because there's nothing more romantic than a king-sized getaway where you can hear and smell literally everything that happens in the bathroom, I suppose? The crack of the door when closed allowed for a solid view of the bed from the toilet. Additionally, there was no overhead fan or, if there was, it was deathly quiet. ---The provided shampoo and conditioner left my hair feeling wiry, oily and thick. Perhaps they mixed up lotion with conditioner? The body soap is labeled as "fresh citrus" but reeked- in fact it smelled quite like Old Spice. Not my favorite. ---The toilet is SQUARE. Also, about 3 inches too low for comfort. ---The sink is also square and the indent within it very shallow. When you turn on the tap, the water strikes the basin and flies triumphantly up into the air like a geyser, dampening everything around it. ---They failed to charge our door key lock properly both nights, so that we had to walk through the whole process of having our key cards reset, then having someone come up with a master key, THEN finally having someone come and briefly charge the lock so that we may at least enter. Two nights in a row. Then, of course, the morning after the first night the clerk had no accounting of the event and when we told him that the night clerk had requested we stop by to ask for an engineer to check the lock, he rolled his eyes and said "what do you want me to do?". An engineer was not sent up to our room. ---In order to operate the elevator, you must hold your key card to the lock and press your floor button at the same time. Certainly not idea when juggling luggage. -----Our room had some slits in the ceiling of the main area that at first I thought was a fan but it turns out was just an empty space where a fluorescent light should have been. Instead it had been turned into a view of the... cables and wires in the ceiling? --Tips: We parked in the lot by the Safeway and had no issues leaving our car there for several nights, with a maximum fee of $20/night. Much better than the $30-$45/night...

It was fairly a nice stay until the last 5 mins I'm in the hotel, check out at the reception. Latisha's unacceptable language and attitude has totally ruined the image of hotel in my mind and also ruined my love on DC, an amazingly beautiful city.

Her language is Insane, Irresponsible, Unprofessional, and Ridiculous!

I was shockingly appalled by her every word and very hostile attitude toward me. I'm your guest, not your enemy. How come a staff be so hateric to a customer?

Latisha is the most rude, impolite, impatient, unqualified, unmannered and unclassy Marriott staff I have ever encountered in my entire 9 years platinum membership where I have stayed with dozens of hotels in different continents.

Facts:

No greeting, very cold and condescending language, her tone is like she's instructing me like she's the boss I'm her staff. She commanded me saying:' put the card into the box', she didn't look at me at all, but instead put her fingers on the box tipping that box. I immediately feel uncomfortable with this inappropriate behaviour.

I then said I have a question about the bill amount, she looked very impatient, asking : what's your question ?

-There is a $30 credit given to me as a platinum member, but on the bill , they were not used to against my F&B spending. Without any verbal response, She then started looking at her laptop for 5 mins. She later responded, without any apology but with very impatient attitude, saying I don't know why this happen but the manager will fix it.

-I then questioned why can't she fix this tiny little issue right away, it's not a few hundred dollars problem that needs management approval, it's just a $30 issue. she repetitively saying, with even more extremely impatient and hostile attitude, that she has no authorisation to modify but only the manager can. Are you kidding me?????? Front desk staff cannot fix a $30 difference but only the manager can? If that's true, your manger would be so occupied with every miscellaneous things everyday since the staff can do nothing.

-Very INTERESTING and WORTH NOTING FACT:

A Caucasian client jumped the line while she was waiting for my bill to be printed, she changed her tone swiftly and warmly greet the guest with smile. The attitude was totally on the contrary.

I do not want to overthink nor escalate this matter to a level that she had discrimination against me bcz I'm an Asian client. But blatantly and obviously her attitudes switched from one direction to another direction within seconds and I can genuinely feel her dislike and impatience on me, from the 1st second of our conversation.

-I then ask can you please check which credit card of mine was used to pay the bill, her answer was even more funny and absurd, she said I cannot tell you bcz U already checked out.

-During this 10 mins tense and hostile conversation, if it wasn't me who tried very hard not to escalate the tensity, we would ended up a fierce quarrel.

I'm wondering how Marriott hired such a rude and no mannered staff to sabotage it's reputation and image, I feel so sorry and unfortunate for this incident happened for my first time in my 9 years Marriott...

When we arrived, the lady at the front desk said we could probably upgrade the next day since we were members. The next morning I went to the front desk to see if we could upgrade but the woman made it sound like it would be a real pain to move us to the upgraded room and she said it was not much larger. The woman at the front desk was not very friendly nor helpful. I felt like she just didn’t want to bother since they had a full hotel.(we wanted to do this for more space since we were staying 7 nights). Disappointingly, it never happened.

They forgot to bring the 3 extra pillows that we requested on their housekeeping website (they only gave us 1 extra pillow-when I asked for 2 more he said okay but never came back. I suspect it was a language issue). We normally don’t like housekeeping to clean our room and will just ask housekeeping for new towels, toilet paper, and we just put our trash outside the room when we clean-up. The woman who did housekeeping on our floor was very accommodating in getting us new towel and toilet paper. Very friendly too even though she could not speak English (it challenged my Spanish speaking abilities but she managed to get everything for us 😁👍) kudos to the housekeeping woman 👍🎉🙏)

Very busy lobby with a lot of people because it was the Howard university homecoming. Most of the people were in a party mood and went to the club on the penthouse. The Nightclub upstairs is noisy (even on 11th floor 3 floors below the club). We thought the club was just happening on weekends but even on Sunday night the music was still blasting loud. Fortunately Monday the club must have been closed (no noise and I think Tuesday the security guard said it was jazz night so it would be quieter). With people going to the club every night, this hotel is NOT appropriate for kids. It is NOT a family friendly hotel. It was so noisy you could clearly hear it on the street when we were walking back from dinner.

Overall, DC is not the safest place. Outside this hotel it did not feel as safe as other hotels in the area that we stayed at before however there was a security guard at the door checking if we were hotel guests (checking for room key cards 👍). That was only on one of the nights

Parking is ridiculous $60 for parking (which we thought was 24 hours but they charged us another $30 the next afternoon to get our keys because we parked longer than 12 hours (I asked him where 12 hours was written because it was not posted nor was it on the ticket stub- he just said 12 hours please pay $30). FYI Their is a parking lot that is literally next door. There is no driveway so loading and unloading luggage can only happen in the valet parking area.

We stayed for 7 nights (we felt that this is not an ideal hotel for long stays, not enough closet space so we had to live out of our suitcases). There was only enough hanger space for 6 shirts.

Would I stay here again ? Probably not even though the location is very good and the hotel isn’t bad. A 5 star hotel about 1 block away might be a better fit for us since we need to stay more long term in...