Originally Posted by ftrichard

I had one night here on a Saturday in November and our group had three other rooms. I booked mine as a Titanium and the other three were under a Platinum’s account.

I was last here in January 2020 when I was also Titanium and vaguely remember an unremarkable stay in a regular queen room. Quite a different experience this time.

The rooms appear to have been refurbished with clean and unscuffed wallpaper and fittings. I’m not sure if all the furniture has been replaced but there was nothing old and tired about any of the rooms I saw.

I was upgraded the day before to a Royal Studio Suite and my NUA was returned automatically to my account. I’d only applied NUAs to the two high categories of suites so my strategy proved correct. I’d have lost a NUA if I’d just ticked all the NUA suite upgrade options.

My suite was a large room with Nespresso machine and a super king bed. The other double rooms had regular kings or queen beds. I was the only one with a suite haha. I also received a half bottle of drinkable Chinean wine which the Platinum member did not.

The big news is that there’s now an executive lounge in the basement next to the gym accessed with the keycard. There were staff bringing out food and drink but they never checked the room number once inside. If you have lounge access then you take breakfast there and cannot use the regular buffet restaurant for breakfast so some may consider this a downgrade but it didn’t prove to be so. Excitingly, the hotel extended lounge access to the two additional rooms booked by the Platinum member and they were told so during check in. The lounge is a small space with five tables seating three each, 12 single bench seats, and a sofa with two soft chairs. It was never busy in the evening or breakfast.

In the evening, there was two hours of snacks and three hours of beer and wine. The beer comes from self-service taps. One type of Spanish red wine and one white. Both were okay to my taste. Soft drinks came from a dispenser and there were no juices. The food spread was decent quality but not extensive and definitely not a meal. Nice sliced sausage roll, samosas, scampi (which was actually really good), some leaves, and a few cheeses. The scampi ran out shortly before the end and we asked for some more and they brought it.

In the morning, despite the small counter, the breakfast choice had pretty much everything. Amazingly, the scrambled eggs were properly cooked and creamy. There was back bacon, pork sausages, baked beans, pasties, cold cuts and cheeses, juices, cereals, and yoghurts. I don’t think the buffet upstairs would have vastly more choice aside from a choice of eggs which you don't get in the lounge.

So, well done Bristol Marriott. Good elite treatment, for me, and some free booze as an added bonus.