Courtyard Marriott - room guarantees right away

[tzier]

I just booked a 3 rooms for wedding guests from 04/23-05/06 at 2.5* Courtyard Marriott in Livermore, CA. Price: 38$/night, which could have been lower had I conducted my research on this forum a little bit more thoroughly. Pleasant surprise, though: The responsiveness of Marriott. I was a bit concerned because my mother is handicapped and because I had read stories of "queen" beeds being considered appropriate for 2 people. Not for parents or grandparents (king preferred). So I e-mailed Marriott through their website, referencing the confirmation codes I had received from and asked for one accessible room and all 3 being non-smoking.

Response within less than 2 hours:

"Thank you for contacting Marriott. We appreciate the opportunity to assist you.

To ensure we are modifying the correct reservation, the following is your original reservation as found in our records:

Property: Courtyard Livermore

Number of Rooms: 3

Arrival Date: 23 April 2005

Departure Date: 6 May 2005

Based on your request, we have guaranteed and/or requested the following room preferences on your reservations:

Confirmation Number: xxxxxxxxxxxx (Room 1)

Accessible room - Guaranteed

King bed - Guaranteed

Non-smoking - Requested

Confirmation Number: xxxxxxxxx (Room 2)

King bed - Guaranteed

Non-smoking - Guaranteed

Confirmation Number: xxxxxxxxxxx (Room 3)

Two double beds - Requested

If we can be of further assistance, we invite you to reply to this email.

Thank you for choosing Marriott."

Neat! Upon my follow up the guaranteed Room 3 being NS, too. A GUARANTEE that I can print out and bring to check-in. Only thing they can't guarantee right now is the accessible room being NS. But that would probably be too much to ask for.

Summary: 2.5* for 38$/night, almost all requests GUARANTEED within less than 2 hours. Very cool.

[thereuare]

... and this is an example of how all hotels should treat all customers, regardless of how they booked!

[mcgervey]

We had the same experience with Courtyard Marriot at the Pittsburgh Airport.

We will always call ahead and they will book us into a king room right when we call. Once we showed up and they had sold out all the king suites, but had just put us back in the last available room, which was a handicapped king room that ended up being HUGE with a huge bathroom. Apparently if they are booked, they don't have to keep a handicapped room available. They just have to keep one available until they are sold out. The ADA apparently doesn't guarantee you a room in sold out hotels, it just guarantees you an ADA accessible hotel if they have room available. Which makes business sense because I'm told the ADA accessible rooms really don't get that much use year round, and most handicapped travellers have their plans laid out before they travel.