SpringHill Suites by Marriott Williamsburg — Hotel in Williamsburg

Four couples in our group all determined we would never stay at this hotel again. Below are the details. On the plus side, the hotel is close to central Williamsburg and area restaurants and attractions, has amenities of interest to families like an indoor pool, gym, free breakfast and ice cream, and in-room mini-refrigerators and microwaves. It appears Marriott has made some efforts to update this older hotel (lipstick on a pig), as the fittings and furniture in the rooms were modern. The bed in my room slept well and was firm. A few members of the housekeeping staff spoke to me in the hallway and seemed friendly. Unfortunately, this is where things go south. The air conditioning units in the rooms are not modern, utilizing older wall units that blow directly over the bed, creating a wind tunnel effect. I left the hotel with a bad cough, probably from a moldy filter and/or dust being shoved up my nose by the air conditioner all night. The ceilings in the hotel have heavy popcorn as another sign you are staying in a dated building. The toilet in my room ran continuously, wasting countless water, suggesting housekeeping is not reporting issues to maintenance, and/or there is no maintenance. I found it odd that the three trash bins in my room just had the plastic bags hanging over them; usually housekeeping will put the bag in the bin for you, not expect a guest paying a couple hundred a night to do the job. It's also interesting that this hotel only sends housekeeping services every other day, which again, when you're paying a couple hundred a night, I'm sorry but they could replace the towels. While my room seemed clean generally speaking, there was a large spider in my sink spinning a web, suggesting further pest control may be needed. The retrofit of the rooms in this hotel means a single tv has been hung on the wall in an awkward mid-way location not in front of the couch and not in front of the bed, so it doesn’t really work for either location. It seems this room at one point probably had two TVs, but to cut corners, Marriott just decided to hang one in the middle and let the guests deal with it. On our first night in the hotel, the fire alarm went off around midnight and sounded continuously for about an hour while a couple hundred people waited outside. The untrained hotel night staff of one and the local fire department seemed unsure how to reset the dated fire system, and after guests were allowed back in the building, the alarm kept going off for another 20-30 minutes. No one could go in their rooms, however, as the decibel level of the alarm system in rooms is unnecessarily loud so as to instantly cause hearing damage to anyone who is simply trying to put on enough clothes to vacate their room. I had ringing in my ears for a day. This needs to be addressed; I understand the need for a loud alarm, but this system is causing physical harm (a liability). Further issues--the older hotel has an inadequate elevator system (two), which housekeeping also utilizes heavily during peak check-out hours, adding to long wait times. This hotel is near Busch Gardens and was clearly being frequented by groups of kids and chaperones on tour buses heading over to the park, so you do the math on hundreds of people trying to use two elevators. It doesn’t work. Wifi also did not work in the hotel at all, and hotel staff would not address the issue. I’m sure they know it doesn’t work, so they just lie about it. This also affected the tv in one of my friend’s rooms, which buffered continuously and could not be viewed/watched. To make matters worse, the hotel appears to sit in cellular dead zone, so you can’t even use a mobile hot spot to get online. We had to laugh that the hotel was taking the local “colonial” theme a bit too far, denying guests access to all Internet and cellular services like olden times. So in summary, was the hotel all bad? No. But were there enough issues that we would never stay there again? Yes. For a VERY pricey $170-200 per night, Marriott can do better and typically does in other Springhill locations. You can see the manager never responds to reviews about this hotel, so they don't care. It's just a money-making venture for Marriott, and you're...

Four couples in our group all determined we would never stay at this hotel again. Below are the details. On the plus side, the hotel is close to central Williamsburg and area restaurants and attractions, has amenities of interest to families like an indoor pool, gym, free breakfast and ice cream, and in-room mini-refrigerators and microwaves. It appears Marriott has made some efforts to update this older hotel (lipstick on a pig), as the fittings and furniture in the rooms were modern. The bed in my room slept well and was firm. A few members of the housekeeping staff spoke to me in the hallway and seemed friendly. Unfortunately, this is where things go south. The air conditioning units in the rooms are not modern, utilizing older wall units that blow directly over the bed, creating a wind tunnel effect. I left the hotel with a bad cough, probably from a moldy filter and/or dust being shoved up my nose by the air conditioner all night. The ceilings in the hotel have heavy popcorn as another sign you are staying in a dated building. The toilet in my room ran continuously, wasting countless water, suggesting housekeeping is not reporting issues to maintenance, and/or there is no maintenance. I found it odd that the three trash bins in my room just had the plastic bags hanging over them; usually housekeeping will put the bag in the bin for you, not expect a guest paying a couple hundred a night to do the job. It's also interesting that this hotel only sends housekeeping services every other day, which again, when you're paying a couple hundred a night, I'm sorry but they could replace the towels. While my room seemed clean generally speaking, there was a large spider in my sink spinning a web, suggesting further pest control may be needed. The retrofit of the rooms in this hotel means a single tv has been hung on the wall in an awkward mid-way location not in front of the couch and not in front of the bed, so it doesn’t really work for either location. It seems this room at one point probably had two TVs, but to cut corners, Marriott just decided to hang one in the middle and let the guests deal with it. On our first night in the hotel, the fire alarm went off around midnight and sounded continuously for about an hour while a couple hundred people waited outside. The untrained hotel night staff of one and the local fire department seemed unsure how to reset the dated fire system, and after guests were allowed back in the building, the alarm kept going off for another 20-30 minutes. No one could go in their rooms, however, as the decibel level of the alarm system in rooms is unnecessarily loud so as to instantly cause hearing damage to anyone who is simply trying to put on enough clothes to vacate their room. I had ringing in my ears for a day. This needs to be addressed; I understand the need for a loud alarm, but this system is causing physical harm (a liability). Further issues--the older hotel has an inadequate elevator system (two), which housekeeping also utilizes heavily during peak check-out hours, adding to long wait times. This hotel is near Busch Gardens and was clearly being frequented by groups of kids and chaperones on tour buses heading over to the park, so you do the math on hundreds of people trying to use two elevators. It doesn’t work. Wifi also did not work in the hotel at all, and hotel staff would not address the issue. I’m sure they know it doesn’t work, so they just lie about it. This also affected the tv in one of my friend’s rooms, which buffered continuously and could not be viewed/watched. To make matters worse, the hotel appears to sit in cellular dead zone, so you can’t even use a mobile hot spot to get online. We had to laugh that the hotel was taking the local “colonial” theme a bit too far, denying guests access to all Internet and cellular services like olden times. So in summary, was the hotel all bad? No. But were there enough issues that we would never stay there again? Yes. For a VERY pricey $170-200 per night, Marriott can do better and typically does in other...

This hotel is presented inaccurately on the Marriott/SpringHill web site. There, the reviews are excellent (overall), and the rating is 4.5 stars out of 5. I made my family's reservation based on those reviews, and am unhappy to report that this hotel is far, FAR from deserving 4.5 stars. There is a dramatic difference b/w the reviews on the Marriott site and those elsewhere on the web. Unfortunately for us, we didn't seek out further reviews of this hotel before booking. This hotel is not much more than minimally acceptable, and far less nice than it ought to be for the price. It is dated, and while the furnishings themselves are modern, they are not clean or kept up. We stayed in a queen suite. While the suite was large and spacious, the sofa had multiple stains on it, the room smelled musty due to the ancient below-window air conditioning unit, and the sink area of the bathroom (carpeted) also appeared very dated and basic (similar to a motel, where the sink outside the shower/toilet room is carpeted). There was a large leak from the bathtub, which over time had caused the wallpaper to become detached from the area of the leak, and black mold was visible around the edges. When we told the staff about the leak, they offered to change us to another room, but due to our outings/sightseeing plans keeping us away all day, this was not possible. We ended up staying in the room, and a maintenance person addressed the leak. We decided to stay there for the rest of our time in Williamsburg because we were gone mostly all day and returned only in the late evening, and we didn't want to spend our vacation time dealing with this. I also would like to mention the raucous environment in the hotel. It was far from being quiet and peaceful, as there were tons of very loud guests that would run up and down the hallways, yelling, at all hours. It's a good thing we are heavy sleepers! However, many groups would also congregate in the lobby for several hours on a couple of the evenings we were there, and were incredibly noisy. I realize that there is only so much that a hotel can do about its guests, but do think that at a minimum, loud guests should be politely asked to keep down the racket, out of consideration for the other guests. On the contrary, we witnessed one of the hotel staffers offering cookies to the loud groups in the lobby. While this is nice and hospitable, I hope it also came with a quiet request to keep the noise to a minimum. In the morning, the breakfast area was an absolute zoo, and finding seating was challenging at times. On our last morning there, the staff ran out of all hot food items at 9:30, even though breakfast was supposed to continue through 10am. We thought that this could only be due to poor planning, given that the hotel was sold out and they should have anticipated needing more food. The hotel wasn't horrible, but could use a good updating and better management of guest behavior and resources. I will not be staying at a SpringHill...