Is it normal for US Marriott's to close the CL on weekends?
 

I just checked in at the PHL Marriott and was told the CL is closed for the weekend and I could have a breakfast coupon or 700 points. No drink coupons offered and yes I asked. There was no mention of this on my reservation and I just tried making a dummy reservation for tonight and there is no mention there either. Is this normal? I'm going to be staying at Marriotts a lot next year I think with the Starwood merger. Is this what I have to look forward too?

Other chains close their lounges sometimes when the hotel is dead, but they still offer drinks or at least soft drinks.

By the way, I was also told I could not have an upgrade because the hotel is sold out. If the hotel is sold out, why close the CL??!?!?!

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I find this to be very common in North America with the exception of some opening Saturday and Sunday morning for breakfast only.

Check this out :-

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...-weekends.html

stimpy, are you at the airport Marriott or the one downtown? The airport Marriott shows (under room description) the exec lounge being closed on the weekends (and some holidays). Your option there is a breakfast coupon or 750pts/night. The downtown Marriott is one of only 12 nationwide that is exempt from offering brekkie on the weekend when the lounge is closed & instead offers 1,000pts/night.

Each hotel (in general; not just these two) is different in terms of what they do w/ exec lounges in the US/Canada. Some keep them open on the weekend, some open them for breakfast only & key accessible for soft drinks, some close them & offer brekkie in the restaurant. Depending on the property the brekkie will be either cont'l or full buffet. Technically the policy is for cont'l, but a lot of properties offer full brekkie.

Here's Marriott's technical breakfast policy re: exec lounge & breakfast on the weekends.

http://www.marriott.com/hotel-promot...d-breakfast.mi

stimpy, the best thing to do is check the exec lounge sticky link above that DYKWIA listed for full service brands worldwide & what the status is wrt the exec lounges. I've spent hundreds of hours maintaining it over the last few years. It's as current as I can make it, based on reports by FTers (including a few by you!) & also my calling US/Canada properties (I need to do another go-round w/ some of the states as they're a bit outdated but it literally is a huge task).

However, the good news is that my understanding is that Marriott has more brands that actually have exec lounges than Starwood does so that's on the plus side for you moving forward.

Cheers.

It's the airport property and I just looked again, there is nothing under the standard room description that says the lounge is closed on the weekend. Only if you search in the description of a club room can you find that it is open Mon-Fri. This is really inadequate notification. Other hotels let their elite members know right in the reservation confirmation if the lounge is closed as well as during the reservation process. Why doesn't Marriott disclose this? Well I guess it's obvious why they don't disclose this. :(

I was told 700 points rather than 750. I chose the breakfast, but then later noticed it was only for continental breakfast and I feel stupid for not taking the points. :( Of course the front desk did not mention to me that it was continental only.

I can understand why a hotel would close a lounge if they are half empty during the holidays or whatever. But I really don't get why they would close the lounge when the hotel is sold out? And a hotel that is inside a major international airport is always going to be busy. Why close it?

I just looked at the Sheraton Suites at the airport here and it has a club lounge and it seems to be open on the weekends. Why is Marriott being so cheap? This is supposed to be a full service Marriott. Not a cheap courtyard. I'm paying something like $250 a night here.

1. It saves a ton of money
2. Most Marriotts continue to sell "concierge level" rooms at a premium over the weekend even when closed.

stimpy, don't shoot the messenger ;).

A standard room reservation would not have access to the executive lounge, which is probably why the exec lounge being open or closed isn't on the confirmation. But then again the confirmation for exec level doesn't really mention open/closed either, unless you click on room details.

I've stayed at other hotel chains that had exec lounges & none of my ressies ever said if the lounge was open/closed on the weekends in a reservation confirmation. Just confirmed room type, bed type, rate, cancel policy, so I would say your experience of getting lounge open/closed in a reservation confirmation is not universal.

The points are 750pts/night. Some properties offer cont'l brekkie per T&Cs; others offer full brekkie. Even if you get a coupon that says cont'l it's always good to ask if it's truly cont'l or full brekkie (or check the exec lounge sticky).

It's not actually the norm for airport properties to be booked very much on the weekends, hence normally cheap rates for airport stays & why some properties decide not to open the lounges. If your hotel is 100% sold out & there's not a weather event, then presumably a lot of events are being held there tonight & the rate goes up. Looking a few weekends ahead, the rate is $119 for the property.

Again, not all hotels have their exec lounges closed on the weekends. You got one that does & one that seems to offer cont'l brekkie. Of course your other option would have been to stay at the PHL Sheraton Suites, but it seems to be going for $300+ tonight so yes you'd have access to the lounge but you'd be paying more for it (at least tonight).

I'm going from what someone else said re: Starwood, but it does seem that Marriott has more brands (JW Marriott, Renaissance, Autograph Collection, Marriott) that have exec lounges than Starwood does so that's a plus moving forward for Starwood people.

You may want to bookmark this link:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...-weekends.html

BTW - as long as we're managing your expectations, you don't get free brekkie at Marriott resorts (a few exceptions to that) & you have to pay for club lounge at Ritz Carltons.

Cheers.

No not at all! I'm just rather disappointed with this particular stay and with Marriott in general as I can see from the sticky thread that a whole lot of Marriotts close lounges on the weekend. And if they have made it a blanket policy here at this particular hotel, I think that is very short sighted as they must have known for weeks that they would be sold out this weekend (FYI the Army-Navy game was here today and all the hotels are busy). They ought to keep the lounge open when they know well in advance that they will be busy.

It's actually $160 under my corporate rate. Knowing what I know now I absolutely would have chosen the Sheraton. I hope that post-merger that Marriott doesn't take away Sheraton lounges.

I don't often stay at resorts and for Ritz I book through CTS to make sure I get lounge access. But thanks.

As you know, Starwood requires Sheratons to have lounges that are open on weekends--or offer some alternative to Plats--and, in fact, open 24/7 for water, coffee/tea, and basic snacks.

IME many Starwoods don't offer club rooms when they expect the lounge to be closed. It's not perfect, but a general way to check that the lounge will be open is to note whether the hotel is offering to sell club rooms on spg.com.

With USA Marriotts, IMO one must assume that lounges will be closed on weekends unless you can find documentation that contradicts this. You also need to be generally aware of the exception list which included the big downtown Philly Marriott at Convention Center.

As stated above, it's rare for a US/Canadian Marriott/Renaissance to have the lounges open on the weekends except maybe for breakfast. The breakfast is hit or miss, even for a given property. If they have a lot of elites or people paying for concierge in advance, they might do breakfast on one or both days of the weekend. However, you might get breakfast one Saturday, and the next the lounge might be closed.

I don't think I've seen more than a handful that have the lounges open on Friday or Saturday nights.

A hotel could be completely full with 10% gold/platinum members on weekends vs 80% gold/platinum members Mon-Thurs.

Best advice to an obvious Starwood lover is to just stay at your beloved Starwood properties as your desire to have Marriotts start conforming to the Starwood way of doing things just ain't gonna happen !

Yes, at most hotels. A growing trend since the mid-1980s.

Just a word of warning as you used the C-word here - staying at a Courtyard will give you no free breakfast as an Elite based on your status - no matter how hard you try, with some very few and far exceptions outside the US. And for most of the US Courtyards will only offer the Bistro breakfast which in my eyes is substantially subpar to what I expect for breakfast (others may think differently, though).

In my opinion the biggest issue ahead with the merger is the Elite breakfast-policy for Resorts and Select Service hotels - SPG offers a viable option here converting the arrival gift into some sort of breakfast, and if that is taken away in the harmonization of Preferred Guest and Marriott Rewards, that would in fact be a major blow that drives me to explore options outside the new company.

Greetings - Dirk

To be clear, I'm not just a Starwood lover as I also have top status in Hilton, Accor, IHG/IC, Hyatt, etc. And I've stayed at thousands of hotels around the world. I've really not seen this phenomenon of clubs being closed on the weekends very much at all, however most of my travel has been outside the U.S. And no I don't expect Marriott to conform to Starwood. I expect the business to do even more cost control post-merger. I just think that Marriott will go too far with this as they have already done with their dumb desk removal idea. These hoteliers sell us images of fantastic clubs around the world and why its a great idea to book club. It's going to backfire if the clubs are closed on weekends.

As for Courtyard not offering free breakfast, that was my point. I don't expect a good breakfast at a cheap low end hotel. But I do expect it at a large full service hotel. Holiday Inn Express and Hamptons, etc. have free breakfast for everyone, but it's not really a great breakfast.

But my little story at the Marriott PHL ends better than it began. After the above exchange with SkiAdcock last night, I went down and spoke with a FD manager about this topic. I didn't make any demands, I just wanted to discuss the topic in general. In the end I got my full buffet breakfast. The quality wasn't great, but at least I filled up for the rest of the day and I don't have to eat United food. :)