We stayed at this hotel for one night while in town for a family funeral – in other words, we had to find a place to stay. There were two large sporting events in the area, so it was very difficult to get a room within miles of Springfield, Mass. When we got the date for the funeral, we called hotel chain after hotel chain and surfed the net for quite a long time, with no success. When we called Marriott we were told there was only one room left in the area, at the Sheraton, so we took it. Because of a very high occupancy, the room rates were increased dramatically and we ended up paying just under $500 for the one night. Of course, this is how it works in the hotel industry – higher demand means higher rates. However, one would expect that, no matter the cost of the room, at a minimum a guest would get a clean space in which the basic features were functional. While Marriott touts their intensive cleaning procedures they have put in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic, staff at this hotel has obviously failed to read the memo. There were opened soda cans in the refrigerator, the carpet had either not been vacuumed at all or, more likely, vacuumed very haphazardly. These days I travel with antibacterial wipes and used them to clean all surfaces in the room, high touch and otherwise, and when I cleaned the counter, residue was left on the wipe. It is obvious that the room was very hastily not cleaned. The telephone was not plugged in (which I discovered when I cleaned it) and we determined that was because the plastic thing that goes into the wall outlet was broken. If the maid had cleaned the phone that person would have noted that it was not plugged in – and if they tried to plug it in would have seen that it was broken. One of the bedside lamps was not plugged in and the USB port was behind the nightstand. We discovered that when we were figuring out why the lamp would not go on. The hand towels had a very strange, almost foul odor (the bath towels and wash clothes were fine). When approached about some of these issues the front-desk staff gave a perfunctory “sorry”, but didn’t even deign to make eye contact. Overall, the room was tired with stained ceiling tiles and obviously had not been refurbished in a long long time, but those issues are separate and distinct from that of putting guests in a room that is simply not clean. I think that the front desk staff employees I spoke with and the housekeeping staff are stressed and overworked. I get it and I sympathize. But if a hotel cannot clean a room and put a working phone in it because of staffing issues, they need to rent out fewer rooms. Staff did offer to send an engineer to fix the phone and housekeeping to clean the room, but the last thing I wanted was people trooping through my room to do address things that should not have been an issue in the first place. I saw very few people (almost no one) wearing masks in that hotel and I was not at all comfortable being around the employees when there is no way of knowing if an unmasked person is also unvaccinated. I cleaned the room myself (all except for the carpet), we did not use the hand towels, and used our cell phones. All practical solutions. However, at the end of the day it is a simple truth that this hotel does not meet the standards we have come to expect from a Marriott product and, short of ending up in the same situation with an absolute need to stay in the area and no other available rooms, I would not stay there again.
