So my girlfriend and I decided to cash in some UA miles / Marriott pts. We limited our destination to places where UA flew, and Marriott had a hotel. We also avoided Hawaii as we've been there a lot. Being from the west coast, it's a bit tough for us to get to the caribbean - and neither of us had been before, so we decided to go for it. Two first class tickets (miles) were booked and I reserved a week at the Marriott Frenchman's Reef with my points.

I had read reviews on Tripadvisor of a grumpy, unhelpful staff, but that didn't phase me. I figured if they could just check me in, i'd be fine and could handle the rest myself.

So we arrived around 2PM at the hotel. The hotel sits beautifully on a high rocky point at a tip of the bay. From a distance, it looks so nice. Once we got closer, we noticed that the building was in need of renovation.

I called yesterday to let them know i was coming and was a platinum member and if they could please put me on some sort of upgrade list. The gentleman on the phone said sure and was very polite.

The lobby scene was pretty crowded with a very long line to check in. There were a lot of complaining guests outside, talking about how bad the service was when trying to get a shuttle to the morningstar resort (the connecting marriott property).

We go to check in and everything goes as usual. It's about 2:30pm now. I ask him if there are any platinum complimentary upgrades available, he seems confused and has never heard of this. He tells me that I can pay $105/night if I'd like to get a water view. I declined and asked if he could find out about a complimentary upgrade. He goes into the back to talk to his manager. He comes back and says that we can have a water view, but not until tomorrow. I'm fine with that. He brings out a paper for me to sign confirming the new room and I sign it. He then also says that check-in time isn't until 4PM and our room isn't ready yet. Really? an hour and a half? That seems odd. Adding to my frustration was that to the left of me another person checked in and he was given his keys right away. Okay fine - so we check our bags with the bellmen and decide we'll walk a bit around the grounds.

Let me stress again that the view from the resort is gorgeous. You can see the cruise ships in the bay, you can see other small islands off the coast, it's just gorgeous. Too bad the same can't be said for the pool. The pool is very run down. it's an odd, long and narrow shape, and overall it looks more like a 1960s Palm Springs motel pool than a category 6 marriott pool. There are iguanas everywhere - I actually think this is pretty cool, but my gf is less than impressed haha.

We go into town for an hour to go to KMart while they're supposedly preparing our room. My gf points out to me that the receptionist didn't offer me a platinum gift. I figured this was because I hadn't gotten the keys yet so we'd see about when we came back. Came back to check in and there was a new receptionist - she gave us keys. I then tried to confirm with her that we would be switching rooms tomorrow to a water view. She was very rude and didn't seem like she wanted to look into this. Finally she looks in her computer and says she sees no mention of this. I told her that we already spoke with the receptionist earlier about this. She said she didn't know about that and that upgrades aren't guaranteed. I told her i knew they weren't guaranteed, but when someone says to me that we would for sure be switching rooms tomorrow and then has me sign some paper to confirm it, I assume that means we are switching rooms. She looked confused so I told her I would come down later to figure it out. Another inept staff member... Also, no platinum gift was mentioned. She told us how to get to our room.

We get to our room and it's okay. Nothing special. The TV is probably a 15" screen, and the satellite feed is pretty crappy - every 2 to 5 seconds, the audio and video jitter and blip. The bathroom is extremely small. Most courtyards have nicer bathrooms than this. Although, to the credit of the place, the bathroom was very clean, which I was happy about. We also were given an adjoining room - on both sides. Each side of the room had a door that could go to the other room on either side. I don't like these rooms as they're usually noisier as I can hear my neighbors' TV programming.

Time to check out the view! Hah. Can't get any worse. We're basically facing the roof of the lobby. Not like a high up view where we can see the roof, but like the top of the roof is at the same level as the bottom of our window. Looking up, i can see other rooms have balconies. Ours does not.

I'm being optimistic about this vacation by thinking the worst is out of the way and I'm ready to savor the rest that St Thomas / St John have to offer. That being said, I'm really disappointed. I love Marriotts and I stay at them for all my business travel needs as I really enjoy their properties. Up until now, I always felt there was a minimum level of service and quality that was always given to me at a marriott, whether it was in a springhill suites in some random town, or a resort in hawaii. This property has really let me down.

I know sometimes FlyerTalkers can be overly picky, but in this case, I really feel like this has been a bad experience thus far.

In sum,
- denied checkin 1.5 hours before 4PM checkin time
- my room was not yet ready, yet another guest's was
- inept staff had no knowledge of how upgrades work
- rude staff
- staff member told us we were getting a new room tomorrow (we even signed for it), next staff member had no knowledge of this
- at both attempts to check-in, was not offered platinum gift either time, nor was my status recognized
- other guests at the hotel were complaining about the service from the moment we arrived
- i was pretty much given the worst room in the hotel