As this is more a stay comment relating to the shuttle service and employees involved with that aspect rather than an "expert hotel review", it has been moved to the Starwood | Starwood Preferred Guest forum.

/JDiver
Senior Moderator

I just completed a stay here and was pleasantly surprised. This will most likely be my go-to hotel when in Newark.

Not doing the proper research, I thought that this hotel was close to the airport. However, it's a solid 5 miles away. Having known that, I would have taken the train to Newark Penn Station instead of Newark airport. I called the hotel for a shuttle but it was going to be a while, so I took a $29 cab ride. It took a solid 30 minutes in rush-hour traffic to get there.

The hotel itself was very nice. Staff was very friendly, the rooms were well appointed, breakfast was excellent, and they had a little bar attached to the hotel. Overall, a very good stay. I will be back.

As others mentioned, it is in an area that is being redeveloped. Looking for some non-chain food, I decided to take a walk downtown (which is about a five minute walk) and went to a place called The Greenroom. This place was your typical, neighborhood watering hole with a very limited menu. However, the food was excellent. It's certainly not fine dining but the food was good. The walk is a little sketchy but there's lots of people around. No worries at all.

Got an evening flight into EWR before a weekend in the city and rates were cheap here, so stayed for the night. No problem at all getting a shuttle - called as we walked to baggage claim and saw the shuttle pull up as the Airtrain pulled into P4. Upgraded to a 1 bedroom suite. No view other than the many apartments, but not bad - only complaint is that, for new construction, the windows are not very sound proof at all!

Easy walk to downtown Newark for dinner, or a quick hop on PATH if you don't want to walk through a dark and not very pedestrian friendly area. Great Spanish and Portuguese restaurants.

Breakfast was a bit much - lots of what appeared to be "parties" of teenage & pre-teen girls, so we walked to Dunkin' around the corner. PATH is literally next to the building, so an easy train ride to the city - if you can get a good rate here, it would be very feasible for business trips to the financial district or for sightseeing in the city on a budget if you don't mind 20-25 minutes on the train.

Where to stay
 

So I have a very short overnight at EWR before the inaugural UA 77W EWR-SFO on Feb 16th.

I arrive from IAH at 11:45pm the night before, and the inaugural is at 7am I believe.
I've stayed at the element before and its a good 15/20 min ride from EWR.
Do you think its worth staying here just to get the stay credit? (I qualify for plat on stays) Or should I just stick with the EWR Marriott? I really wish I could get SPG credits for staying at a Marriott already.
In reality I'll probably get to the hotel by 1am latest, and I would ideally like to be at EWR by 5am for any inaugural festivities.

So if I stay at the element, I would have about 2 hours of sleep if I'm lucky, since I'll leave from the hotel around 4:40am.
If I stay at the Marriott, I'll probably get to the hotel around 12:30 latest, and I wouldn't need to leave until about 4:45/4:50am.

From what I could tell, I'll maybe get another 45 minutes of sleep at most if I stay at the Marriott. Any suggestions on what I should do?

Thanks!