DL-Don

The room looks NOTHING like that picture. No desk. No chest of drawers. And thankfully, no ugly green and gold duvet.

Baze

Sorry, I misunderstood that your room was not like the one pictured.

flyerfmaz

Speaking as a boomer (I'm 56), when I travel for leisure I almost never really need a desk, either.

However, 99.9 percent of my travel is business and, for that, a desk is entirely a necessity. Without a desk, I lose money because I spend too much time fidgeting around and less time billing clients. Like many consultants (and there are a LOT of us in various fields) I only earn a living on billable time, not a fixed salary. Do I work entirely out of the hotel room? Of course not. Plenty of time is spent at my client's offices, but there is always work to do afterwards -- research, collaboration, document preparation, etc. Without a desk and chair I'm screwed.

If Marriott is going to rip out desks because they want to appeal primarily to the vacation crowd and less to the business people, they're perfectly within their right to do that. It will, however, force almost all of us who travel on business and need a desk to look elsewhere for accommodations, regardless of whether we're "Millenials", "Boomers", "Gen X", "Gen Y", whatever. I know plenty of young workers who travel and would be up a creek without a desk, so I really don't think this issue has anything to do with one's age or generation.

DL-Don

+1

After 34 years as a salaried employee, I "retired" to become an hourly paid consultant.

GenevaFlyer

There's always worse:

Fleming's Hotel in Frankfurt

DL-Don

Transparent glass bathroom walls -- Always fun to put on a show for the bedbugs.

dank0014

But there IS a desk. Perhaps maybe the issue is that they haven't put the desks in all the rooms yet, which then yes, shame on the hotel.

I can guarantee you I had a desk at that hotel. We shouldn't bucket it as an "idiot" design to Marriott Rooms when it isn't quite true.

I'm on my phone so can't get the photo uploaded, but there is a clear review in February 2015 where someone posted the renovated room picture, and you can clearly see the desk in there. The desk is a bit smaller than the normal desks, but still plenty of room to work.

Not sure if I'm allowed to post the link and if not, mod can remove, but look at the first picture on this review....wish I would have taken a picture of the actual room when I was there, but will the next time I go. The poster of the remodeled room was identical to what I had. You can see the desk under eye level of the TV close to the window.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserR...ECK_RATES_CONT

DL-Don

The picture I posted is exactly what the rooms formerly looked like.

DL-Don

As I said early in this thread, the manager agreed with my issues and told me they were in the process of contacting out putting the desks back in the rooms. Why would the hotel spend money to put desks back in if they were already in the new design?

What I used for a desk was the TV stand that was barely deeper than a laptop. That is what you are seeing in the picture in the tripadvisor review with the chair in front of it.

dank0014

Yes but I am saying look at the picture in the link I provided where it says arriving early 2015 and shows the renovated rooms. That picture has been there since late 2014 and shows a desk and I am confirming j was just there and there was a desk in my room. I am sure the hotel didn't just remodeled and two weeks after finishing said lets remodel everything again????

I think you are becoming offense and saying every Marriott redesign doesn't have a desk or that none of the rooms in this property has a desk which is false.

DL-Don

I am only talking about the SFO Airport Marriott. Others are contributing concerns about other properties.

I know what was in MY room and it wasn't a desk; it was a TV stand. The TV was bolted to it. If that's a desk for you, fine.

Scottie

It is unfortunately not just Marriott that is heading done the 'no desk' form-over-function design path. I have encountered the same totally useless [IMO] room set-up at the Hyatt Boston Harbor, and have not been back. And FWIW, Millennials and Gen Y are the same demographic cohort.

darthbimmer

I'm a Gen Xer and I agree, when I travel for leisure a desk just gets in the way. Usually I use it as a second luggage stand when traveling with other people. When I travel for business, however, especially on a trip where I need to do more work from the hotel than simply responding to email for 15-20 minutes in the evening, a desk is vital to my productivity.

DL-Don

What Marriott needs is someone with some real practical creativity. While it would need to stand up to abuse, someone surely should be able to create something like this that is a desk when you need it and out of the way when you don't

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAa6bOWB8qY#t=64

in order to make everyone happy!

Baze

The old adage, you can please some of the people all the time, all the people some of the time, but you can never please all the people all the time.

A hotel needs to figure out where it's bread and butter is. For most it is the business travelers during the week. They need to cater to them. Look at the rates for most hotels, they drop like a rock on the weekends for the leisure crowd. Now should they take the desks out Friday and put them back in on Monday? Lot of work and need for a lot of storage area which could be used better for something else. As most business travelers need a desk it would make sense to have one in there. What I am seeing more is a rolling type desk/table that you can move around the room and tucked away under a shelf. This works great as you can put it anywhere you want.