DC JW Marriott Downtown

[eviljelly]

I stayed at the JW Marriott (at 1331 Pennsylvania) from 8/25 - 8/27.

It may have to do with the fact that I paid only $70 per night, but I really enjoyed the JW Marriott. Everything in the room was clean, and the staff was always respectful and nice to us. The hotel restaurant we ate at (1331) was great, and there's a Starbucks in the lobby, which may be a plus or minus, depending on who you ask. My only complaint would be that the gym/pool area was a bit grimy and didn't seem as roomy or as clean as it could have been. Oh, the decore was a bit cheesy, too, but I've come to expect that from the Marriotts in general. It was a classy kind of cheesy, though; I thought it worked pretty well, as long as you didn't scrutinize too much.

The location was superb. We had very little time in DC, and one of the friends I stayed with is a huge sightseer type, so it was awesome that we were so close to everything.

Overall, a great experience. I would definitely recommend the JW Marriott at 1331 Penn.

[jorgebarnes]

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.

[Desirees]

We stayed there from 5/6-5/7, checking in around 5pm. When we drove in, the bell hops were really friendly. They were prompt about opening the doors and then took out our luggage, gave DH the valet ticket and then escorted us to the reception.

There were two agents there, and when I went up there and gave them my name, the guy checking us in looked at the other agent and gave a smile and said something to him on which the other guy smirked as well. On hindsight, I should have asked what the joke was about, since it was very obvious it was something related to us or our last name. He located our resevation and mentioned that it was a Priceline reservation. I then asked him whether we could have a room with a good view. He said " Let's talk about the room first" ( the tone was kind of patronizing, did not like that at all), " all we have are non smoking double beds or smoking king beds". I said non smoking is preferable, at which point he gave us the room cards and bade us a pleasant stay.

The room was on the 5th floor, it was one of the rooms facing the street and we could still see the monument. However the window was angled with curtains that you could not retract. In other words, when you enter the room, you see a room with nice curtains where the window is. When you draw back the curtains, on one side it goes only half coz the rest is the wall. Very wierd.

The room was kinda smallish and dark and we were just accepting it, so I took off my shoes and the carpet was moist. Distinctly moist...all over the room. So we called the front desk and they sent someone over with keys to another room on the same floor. Walk in there, the first half of the room was dry, and the portion in front of the windows was moist.

So we called down again, and this time they put us in a room on the 4th floor which had a really nice view. It was on the side of the hotel towards the White house, there was a very nice view with the whole wall being a window. It was also larger than the other two rooms we were shown. I dont know if they decided we have had enough of wet carpets and decided to give us a break...

The toiletries were the same as in the JW Marriott, Bangkok and we were kind of surprised at that. The beds were comfortable, there were plenty of towels, and there were bathrobes hanging in the closet. They had tea/coffee making facilities.

We did not eat in the hotel, however the next day, had coffee from the Starbucks there.

We had to waitabout 15 mins for the car, we did call from the room about 10 mins prior to going down. Valet was polite and friendly and overall it was an OK experience.

[urbantracker]

hot and muggy - but that is DC in July. Other than that my stay at the JW Marriott was very comfortable. We stayed over on a Sunday night (July 17) and departed DC in early evening on the 18th. About a week before arrival I called the Marriott's 800 number to confirm my reservation and they were very helpful in allowing me to set up with the specific requests for NS rooms with 2 beds. My sister got to DC at about 3 PM and got a room with a fantastic view of the Capitol and Washington Monument. I got there just before midnight due to flight delays and ended up with a court yard view. By the time I arrived, the Marriott had run out of parking so I had to use another garage about two blocks away. Metro station was close and made it easy for getting around to all the sights.