Age of Hotels/Year Built
 

Is there any way you can see or find out what year a hotel was built? I am really trying to make a effort to not stay in crappy old hotels. Today I stayed in a brand new Spring Hill Suites and was blow away! I will never stay in the crappy Courtyard in that town again when I am on business!

My first thought was that excludes all the Boscolo properties, the Marriott Budapest, the Prague Sheraton, the downtown DC FI, the downtown DC JW (which predates most CYs)...

What the poster wants is the condition of the hotel and maybe the layout, which can usually be figured out by looking at the property pictures and checking this site and TA. The TA comments are usually pretty useful and can differentiate between bad properties and older but still good properties. For example, while the Miami Airport CY might be newer, it's lack of insulation and location on the take-off path make it a bad property, while the Atlanta Executive Park CY was the first CY but is quiet, well maintained and has a good staff. Many people like it over the nearby Marriott Century Center.

Just click on "Room Details" during the online reservation process on Marriott.com. You'll usually see something like this:

Hotel Highlights

• Hotel was built in 1985
• Rooms were renovated in 2015

I suppose if you want to limit yourself to hotels built in the past year or two, the year that the hotel was built is meaningful.

However, just because a hotel was built 20, 50, or even 100 years ago, there's no reason to assume it's a "crappy old hotel." In recent years, I've stayed in older properties -- first-generation Courtyards, historical Autograph Collection properties, cookie-cutter Marriott Hotels from the 1980s -- whose rooms and lobbies are in excellent condition.

Also the "built" and "renovated" years are not always reliable. The "built" year can sometimes be the year the hotel was brought into the Marriott system, not the year when the building was built. The "renovated" year can be ten years go, but the hotel actually performs ongoing maintenance and refreshes that keep the hotel in excellent condition.

I find that the best way to get warnings about hotels in poor condition is to read reviews at TripAdvisor, Marriott.com, and here on FlyerTalk. When multiple recent reviews mention that a hotel needs to be renovated, the reviews tend to be right.

You actually believe those pictures? Those are specifically staged, edited, and touched up to make the property look much much better than it really is. Not to mention they could be years old immediately after the hotel was refurbished. I defy anyone to actually find a room that looks like one in the pictures.

The pictures will quickly show if it is an old style CY which appeared to be the question. The guest pics are usually pretty accurate. As someone else mentioned, you do not believe any single statement, review or pic, but you look for trends.

BTW, someone asked about rooms at the Majestic in KL recently in another thread. I went into the site to get the name of the room type and immediately smiled. The room pictured was exactly like my room. The Bangkok FS has very accurate pics, too. Come to think of it, the same can be said for the Bangkok Ren and CY.

It's not the age of the hotel but the owner's willingness to maintain and refurbish when needed.

For suburban and rural locations I use a few metrics to try to determine if the hotel is rundown:

1. Look at the photos on the MR Site. You can at least tell which generation the property is by the room decor.
2. Look at the date of the last renovation (if listed). Not always a reliable indicator, but I am more suspicious of properties where the last listed refresh is 8 to 10+ years. Though sometimes I see the photos show a more recent generation, so it may be they just didn't update the renovation date on the web site.
3. Look at TripAdvisor reviews (or FT reviews if available though frequently not for suburban and rural properties). I never look at reviews on the MR site nor the other chain sites for their properties. They tend to be skewed and unreliable unless proven otherwise.
4. Average age of properties from other chains in the area (For me I check IHG and sometimes Hilton).

From the above I get a pretty good idea of what to expect but occasionally still make a bad decision. Expectations always need to be tuned to whats available in the area (item 4 above is to help with that calibration). Some areas just don't have good properties and picking the least bad maybe all you can do. Since most of my stays are one (maybe two nights), even when I make a bad call I don't have to live with it for too long.

For major metro areas you can usually find enough reviews to get a good idea. Major metro areas frequently tend to have a lot of older properties; however, many (if not most) are very well maintained.

--Jon

OP didn't say "hotels over a certain age".

It's possible to exclude hotels built in the 80s without writing off all hotels older than that.

I should of stated this in the beginning. This is for hotels in the middle of no where, not in bigger cities. The only options mainly are Courtyard, Springhill, and Fairfield Inn normally. If I stay in a metro city I don't have a issue if the hotel if it's older as I try to stay in regular Marriott's, renaissances , or AC Hotel's. Again this is in the USA.

It just seems like a Courtyard, Spring Hill, or Fairfield Inn that was built in the last two years for the places I have been going lately really have made my stay a lot better! Just the new look from the outside to the modern look on the inside. You can just tell the difference. But again that is just my personal opinion! I know some people like the older look and feel!

Absolutely true when it comes to the lesser brands, age can be a huge factor. I've stayed at some real old dogs, especially Towneplace Suites in the South that would be subpar college housing.

I agree, OP. I'm suspicious of older, unrenovated or poorly maintained properties. I gauge the condition of the property by checking three things:

1. As Horace noted above, the "Hotel Highlights" section includes age of construction and renovation
2. Pictures on the MR hotel website show size, decor, condition, etc. Understand, of course, that these pics always try to portray the property in the best light and may show only renovated rooms (some properties are in the middle of a lengthy refresh process), upgraded rooms, etc. And watch out for computer-generated pics-- I'm seeing more and more of these lately, and they are NOT the actual property. Sometimes they're not even close!
3. Pictures and reviews on social reviews sites give a better sense of what the place looks like without professional staging. But read carefully as many reviews are either shills or "one hit wonders" with an axe to grind.

Sometimes, even decent, well-maintained middle-aged Marriotts suffer in comparison with the newest properties. I’ve stayed at brand new properties that were so modern, stylish, and packed with up-to-date features (USB charging points everywhere, Internet-connected TVs, kitchen appliances that I’d like to have in my own home) that it can be a letdown to stay at a five-year-old property afterward.

On the other hand, I have encountered a relative few “crappy old hotels” in the Marriott family, and most of my bad experiences fall into three categories.

• Older Fairfield Inns - Overall, I find that the combination of the cheaper materials and methods used for construction, furnishings, and décor—plus their exposure to the families and itinerant workers who tend to frequent Fairfields—leave them looking kind of worn and dumpy after about four years. If the property’s construction or renovation date is older than that, chances are the property will be disappointing.

• First generation TownePlace locations - Perhaps these were supposed to be “cheap and cheerful” when the brand was launched in the ’90s (?), but they have definitely not aged well. First-gen locations which have been substantially renovated are still iffy propositions, but I’ll avoid unrenovated ones if at all possible.

• First generation Residence Inns - You know—the kind of Residence Inns that look like a ’70s/’80s suburban apartment complex. I’ve never stayed at one that I would consider to be even remotely “nice”. As with early TownePlace locations, renovations seem to be focused on public areas with room updates being minimal at best.

• Old FS Marriotts - Particularly in secondary markets or neglected parts of major markets. Locations that come to mind offhand are Rancho Cordova, CA, Albuquerque Pyramid, and Houston Hobby. You get the sense that these were nice hotels at one point but have been allowed to become rather frowsy.