I travel on a regular basis. And when I do, my preference is to stay at a Marriott-owned hotel,…read moremostly because I can almost always count on my following top-five priorities being met:
* Cleanliness: The rooms and common areas are almost always very clean.
* Safety: Entry into the rooms is almost always via an indoor hallway, where entry is obtained through the front lobby or by key-card access into one of the main hallways.
* Quietness: Whether I'm traveling for work or for pleasure, I like to feel well-rested for a better day afterwards. And, these hotels are usually pretty quiet.
* Free perks: As an elite member of this hotel chain, most of the time I get free perks during every stay. These are usually simple (like free bottled water), but they're appreciated.
* A good membership program: Marriott offers a very good membership program for their elite members. It gives me the ability to earn free stays for the future (for pleasure) by choosing to stay here for business.
Within the Marriott chain of hotels, Fairfield is one of my favorites because the rooms most often have:
* A comfortable living and work space
* A good sized TV
* A mini refrigerator
* A microwave
* A well supplied free continental breakfast
* All-day free coffee available in the lobby
Now, on to the details for my stay at this particular hotel, at the Fairfield by Marriott (in Old Town San Diego, California). The primary reason I came here was for a week-long business trip, but I also decided to have a lot of fun while I was here as well. For this reason, I came here with my daughter; I worked during the days, but then we packed the evenings with lots of fun activities.
The pros: Every member of the staff here was friendly and professional throughout our stay here. I found the hotel to feel more homey than a typical hotel; it appeared to be a hotel that was originally constructed as a townhouse complex or an apartment complex, and then converted into a hotel. It was very pleasant. The all-day free coffee was excellent, as was the free continental breakfast. Our hotel room was very clean and fully supplied with what I would expect from any other Fairfield by Marriott.
The cons: Even though I am an elite member of Marriott, I did not receive any free perks, like free bottled water, during my stay here. But this was only a minor annoyance. One thing that was a major annoyance was the parking structure, which was not sufficient for the number of customers here. The parking spots are incredibly tight spots to park in and there are not enough of them, which is the hotel's fault. To make matters even worse, several people who parked here during my stay felt incredibly entitled, with several of them taking two parking spots for their precious car. This is obviously the fault of the self-centered customers who did this while they were here. Their actions were really inconsiderate of others, especially when there aren't enough parking spots to begin with. I believe the owners/management should correct the parking problem for their customers in three ways: (1) they should increase the size of the parking spots, (2) they should increase the number of parking spots, and (3) they should allow the police to give parking tickets to the self-centered people who can't park legally.
So overall, if it wasn't for the annoying parking situation, this hotel would easily be a 5-star worthy location with how nice it was here. Therefore, based on my experience, I am rating this hotel as "very good" (4-stars), but not excellent. If the owners/management put in a little effort to correct a couple of things, this hotel could easily become a 5-star worthy location.
