Just got back from my fantastic weekend at DC and wanted to share my experience. JW Marriott has a perfect downtown location - 2 blocks from the white house, and 10-15 minute walk to the museuems. The amenties were definitely 4-star, however service at times seemed 3-star-ish. I'm strictly talking about petty things like: hosing the pool deck at 9 am, in turn getting the dozen people that were there's towels and shoes soaked. Reception staff not as friendly and helpful as I expected. Keeping that in mind - for $78 I would take this any day of the week, and would definitely return. But had I paid full 4-star full-price, I would have been miffed about the service. Regarding the attitude of reception desk. I bid on a non-smoking room with a king-sized bed. Immediately after winning, I contacted JW Marriott and asked them to confirm that it was a non-smoking room with king-sized bed. They said they would put the request in but nothing was guaranteed. I also asked about early arrival, and they said they would put in a request but nothing was guaranteed. When I showed up at 2:00 (2 hours before check-in), not only did the front desk lady (same person I talked to on the phone) work the word "Priceline" into every single sentence, she gave me a room with 2 doubles. I asked her if I waited until 4:00, could I get a King - she said they were sold out of Kings for the night. I said "May I ask, out of curiosity, why my request for 1 King-sized was turned down and I am here before check-in time?" she said Priceline does not request types of rooms and nothing is guaranteed. I said that I had talked to her directly *after* booking, and made the request. She said she has no record of me making a request for a King-sized, and repeated that there are no guarantees with Priceline, and I said "Ma'am, I'm not talking about Priceline. I'm talking about my discussion with you after the booking - I made a request and now you don't even have a record of that." She said nothing was available but she would contact me the next day about moving to a room with a king-sized for my 2nd night - and she never did. Basically the message I got was: "Look, you got an unbelievable deal out of this, and we're not budging on anything." I'm used to discussing the situation with the hotel and they work with me because they want to keep me as a customer. My guess is that hotels train their employees not to negotiate with Priceline people because they have no chain-loyalty - they go by star-range and won't base their returning to the hotel on their experience, but how the bidding works out. Is this everyone else's experience? Anyway, I want to repeat that I would recommend this place to anybody - it makes seeing the musuems and monuments so easy, and is safe at night and just a couple blocks from the metro, which I used to get to places with more inexpensive but tastier meals with diverse crowds - Adams/Morgan and Chinatown. Definitely a 4-star quality hotel in terms of ameneties, I just think the service was 3-star, but most of this may be due to the fact that I had Priceline tattoed on my forehead.
