Originally Posted by HereAndThere

My problem with these cutbacks is that the good CL serves as a valuable resource for me that is not provided by the hotel restaurant. I like being able to slip in an out of the lounge on my own schedule and have some decent breakfast and evening snacks. I often don't want to have to go to a restaurant and take the time to be waited on, etc. And in the evening there is no place in most hotels for one person to have a variety of hors d'ouevres and maybe a glass of wine. Sure I could go down to the restaurant or bar and order a plate of one kind of hors d'ouevre and sit there and eat them, but that's not how I like to spend my evening. I like to be able to walk down the hall, stop in the lounge and have a choice of different items in the evening, maybe read a paper or watch TV and relax. Or in some cases I like to take a little bit of food back to my room and work and go back and forth to the lounge as I wish.
For those hotels that have good lounges I don't mind paying a larger daily room rate. But I see no reason to stick with Marriott when the lounge food has diminished so much in quality and the lounges are closed on weekends (and too often other times).
The JW Marriott in DC is a good example of a lounge in which the quality of food in the evening had badly deteriorated at my last stay in January. This month I switched to a different (and much cheaper) DC Marriott with a lounge that in some ways is now better than the JW. Next month I'm making my first stay at a Starwood hotel in years and I'm looking into a status comp with Starwood.
Add the CL deterioration along with cutbacks on newspapers, no mouthwash or other amenities, etc., I don't see much reason to stick with Marriott.