Just noticed on the Marriott website this property has opened. Category 3. Exec lounge open daily; EL located on 14th floor with views of the city.

"Located within the Kochi Lulu Mall campus (one of the largest malls in the country), the hotel has convenient proximity to the city attractions, the city center and just 30 minutes away from the Airport.

The hotel offers an exciting range of dining options, each one special in its own authenticity and flavours. �Cassava�, the exclusive Kerala Cuisine specialty restaurant, will have on its menu delicacies from across 3 influential cultures, i.e. Moplah, Syrian- Christian and Sadya that give Southern cuisine its perfect blend of taste and flavours. The menu has been crafted by masters of these respective cuisines, from recipes that have been passed down over many generations.

�Kochi Kitchen� the all-day-dining, will be the place to spend quality time with friends and family, as the restaurant offers indulgent menu options, of world cuisines across Asian, Continental and Italian specialties. Lit with beautiful, natural sun-light the restaurant pulsates with warmth and energy. From dawn to dusk, we have it all at the Kochi Marriott Hotel, unwind after a long day�s work at �10 Degree�s North�, a classic wine and whiskey bar, with just the right mix of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and delectable finger food accompaniments. Catching up with friends, or just some �me time� on your mind, this is the place to be

To complete this holistic experience, the wellness floor at the Kochi Marriott Hotel has the renowned �Quan Spa� offering both Western and traditional Ayurveda treatments, a well-equipped fitness center and a lap size pool. Indulgence has never looked or felt this good."

Cheers.

I'm a big fan of this, as I travel to Kochi on business every 12-18 months.

Up until this opening, the only Marriott option in the area was the Airport Courtyard.

It's ok for a non-US Courtyard (ie, closer to a mainline Marriott), and really convenient to the airport. However, that area has little local dining and is quite inconvenient to the Kochi city center (30 minutes is a generous travel estimate, speaking from experience).

If you stay there on your next trip, please do a trip report in this thread. Thx!

Cheers.

I've just completed a three-night stay. My impressions:

Booking: This property is often available for under $100/nt (including hefty local taxes approaching 20%), but you can also grab a pointsaver redemption on this Cat 2 for 7500 pts. I chose the latter option.

Location: The property is located about two-thirds of the distance between COK and Kochi old town. However, that last third between the hotel and old town is significant if your primary goal is to see the tourist attractions: the under-construction Metro is a big factor in restricting traffic flow and keeping travel times on that stretch to about 30-40 min.

As mentioned in this thread, the hotel is relatively new. Indeed, the airport taxi dispatchers (perhaps thinking of the Courtyard near the airport) seemed confused when I asked for the "Kochi Marriott". The same was true for my taxi driver and two tuk-tuk drivers. To instantly eliminate any confusion, tell your driver you want the "Marriott at Lulu Mall". (Think I'm kidding? The Mall is #5 on Tripadvisor's top area attractions! Everybody knows where it's located.) It's a very good-looking hotel, tucked behind the Mall away from the highway - a very quiet location.

Rooms: as Gold, I was assigned an upgraded room on the 24th (of 25) floors - terrific bed, flat and lousy pillows, powerful and quiet A/C, bare floors, one-touch motorized drapes at the large windows and the glass bathroom partition. Nice Samsung TVs with a selection of English channels (althogh, not one of them in hi-def.) Every wall outlet in the room (indeed, in the lounge and other public areas as well) is the universal type - no power adapters needed for many visitors. I did not see any powered USB sockets, however.

Gold & Platinum benefits: Breakfast is not served in the lounge but instead in the ground floor restaurant, with a food selection and attentive service that you would expect to find in any FS Marriott. Naturally, the selection was more skewed toward veg dishes, but there were more than enough non-veg options to keep me happy.

The Sales Manager came by at breakfast to introduce herself and make sure my needs were being met. (I assume the visit was keyed by my Gold membership, but can't be certain.)

A flutist plays during breakfast hours four times per week - a nice touch. (Or, was he playing a recorder? I never could tell the difference.)

The lounge is located on the 21st floor. How do you find it? Easy, just turn right at the room bearing the plaque "Australian Government | Australian Travel Commission"!?!?!

The lounge is quite large: I stopped counting seats when I got to 50. But, it's not the shear number of seats; the tables are also large, allowing, for example, a couple to each read a full-size local paper while seated opposite each other. The lounge is large enough to hold an Indian wedding party, as I observed my first night. Also, there were separate areas with computer workstations, small meeting rooms, and a bathroom. The lounge covers both sides of the buidling, with lots of window-area for viewing the skyline.

Evening snacks were served 1730 - 1930. There were always four hot dishes (two veg, two non-veg) and several salads, salsas, cheeses and raw vegetables. Attentive staff (too attentive?) did great in clearing dishes and replenishing food items.

The lounge is open all day for cookies, candies, nuts, coffee and cold drinks, etc. I did not stay over a weekend, but I cannot believe it would be closed.

The lounge (indeed, the entire property) does not serve alcohol. They have applied for a permit, but I was told that such things take time.

Summary: a good and reasonably-priced choice if visiting the general area; not so great if you're just interested in the old town tourist attractions. This could change within the next two years, however, as the Metro nears completion. In fact, I was told that the first phase of the Metro (the stretch between the airport and the hotel) had a very limited trial run the week before I arrived.

Thanks for the detailed trip report. Much appreciated!

Cheers.

Hopefully someone will fill us in when their permit is approved

So the Courtyard Marriott has its alcohol license now, but I don't understand how they handle drinks in the lounge. The server rings them up on a register, but I assume they are not charged...happy hour goes from 530-930pm, which is nice, with two choices of veg and non veg items from a menu.

Have a booking for November. Appears still no liquor license.

I have a base category room but with platinum status, assuming I get access to the Lounge.

Appreciate any insights from others.

I stayed two days back, being a platinum member I got upgraded to suit room in 15th floor, given the lounge access also .

Any recent trip reports does the lounge now server alcohol? What options do they have?

also how is the spa? Do they have a working hot tub / steam room

We spent five nights here at the end of December, with Bonvoy Gold status. Overall our stay was okay.

We had a points + cash booking for a one bedroom king suite with lounge access. Despite my "high floor" preference we were given a room on the 5th floor.

(Digression: Our floor was labelled 12, but is actually the 5th floor above ground level. The floor numbering goes L, L1, L2, 10, 11, 12, 14 (i.e. no 13), 15.....25. The lounge on floor "21" is thus actually on the 14th floor above ground level, as SkiAdcock correctly wrote in the OP.)

In advance of our stay we received a friendly note asking when we expected to arrive, so that our check in could be made "memorable". (I've no idea what that would have entailed.) I replied that we'd arrive around 14:30 but would of course understand if our room wasn't ready before their check in time of 15:00. It wasn't and we then played a 90 minute version of "your room will be ready in 20 minutes". When it became clear that this could take a while, my request that we be allowed to wait in the lounge was rather reluctantly granted.

The room was comfortable and everything worked. It was a proper suite in the sense that it was possible to close the door to the bedroom and main bathroom, leaving a living area with fridge (with plenty of room for guest use) and a separate WC and basin.

The lounge is open 24/7, but most of the time there is nothing available except coffee and a very limited range of soft drinks. "Happy hour" ran from 16:30 to 19:00 during our stay and during that period there was a good range of savoury and sweet snacks available. It was perfectly possible to put a main meal together and many guests did. Alcohol was available during "happy hour": several bottles of spirits, some red and white wine (one bottle of white, two of red) and beer. the beer was on a very limited "first come frst served" basis -- between ten and twelve small bottles of Heineken and (US style) Budweiser.

The lounge does not serve breakfast and is not available for check in or check out. Lounge staff could not reactivate key cards when they stopped working (which ours did, several times, despite never being kept near other cards or phones).

That was mostly less than positive; sorry. We enjoyed eating at the downstairs "Kochi Kitchen" restaurant. Breakfast there was busy but they had a very wide range of offerings, both self-serve and cooked to order. We also ate two evening meals here and were very pleased.

It was nice to be able to enjoy a drink outside in the pool bar area, although we learnt not to rely on any particular beverage being available on a given evening. Expect your beer of choice to be sold out, the waiter to have misplaced their bottle opener and the pen to be missing when it's time to sign the bill.

The location worked for us. My spouse took the Metro to the university (CUSAT) and I appreciated the mall next door (with a decent food court) and other shops nearby. However, something nearer Fort Kochi would probably be better for a sightseeing visit.

Staff were generally eager to please but -- apart from housekeeping and the waiters in Kochi Kitchen -- not very flexible. At times it seemed there were far too many men in suits trying to manage the staff without suits rather than actually assisting guests.