Tracy W.
Yelp
It pains me to have to write a less than good review as generally I only bother to write a reviews when I've had an extraordinary experience I want to share.
First a little about the Keys. I live in Miami and am very familiar with the Keys and the quality of the accommodations. There are a tiny few brand new properties that are truly four or five star, but they are soooo expensive that I venture to say your average vacationer will never have the joy of experiencing those properties in person.
The remainder, even the fairly nice ones, are still going to be dated and in less than perfect condition. The coastline in the keys is generally preserved according to the natural Florida ecosystem meaning the coastline may be more rock, or sea grass than while sandy beach.
So when staying in the keys, I'm very forgiving when it comes to all of these issues because this is just how the keys are.
Ok so now I'll go into why the low star rating for this property on this trip.
First, a very large piece of artwork hanging over the couch in our newly renovated room (very nice renovation minus the bathroom which still looks very dated), fell on my boyfriend and I while sitting on the couch. It could have seriously injured us but thankfully, did not. I called the front desk requesting it be rehung. Then waited. And waited. And waited. And waited some more. I had to then spend my time calling a second time to get a repair engineer to come. I would expect even the lowest price hotel to jump into action very quickly to repair something that almost injured two of their guests!
Ok so the Art got rehung and we venture off to dinner at Gus' grill which is the properties high-end restaurant.
After being sat and handed the menu, I looked around at the setting which was like a dated version of what someone thought a Denny's in the keys should look like in terms of the interior decor. There were dated, padded in plastic , both type benches along the windows when the main pull of this restaurant is the view of the gorgeous sunset so why would you want to sit with your back to the main attraction? I then looked at the menu and was initially greeted with entrees like a hamburger and pizza. I actually had to ask the waiter if we were in the right restaurant as I couldn't imagine this was the quality of the high-end restaurant serving steak and lobster in a Marriott!
We were then informed they aren't offering their full menu. Presumably because we are in the early days of reopening after COVID-19 shut downs. Ok though, I get that. I'm not unreasonable. Although the menu was frighteningly non-high end, their specials made up for it.
We started by ordering their seared Ahi tuna appetizer, then I ordered Florida lobster and my boyfriend ordered fresh snapper for our main courses. We ordered drinks and settled in to enjoy the sunset and anxiously awaited our appetizer as we were very hungry by now after waiting for quite a while for the picture to be rehung in our room.
So then we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. And waited some more when finally our waiter shows up.... with our entrees. Wait, what happened to the appetizer? We inquired and suddenly the waited scurried off, we were brought some nice bread very quickly to appease us, which at least was a nice gesture, and the appetizer showed up very quickly, after we had eaten half our entrees.
The good news is the lobster and the snapper were superb! Very nice. The tuna was mediocre as were the flavorless sides.
I should also mention that this trip was the first time we had left our home in 3 months due to a Pandemic. And the reason we left was because it was our anniversary and we have been through tremendous trauma in the past 3 months due to said Pandemic.
So needless to say, by this point I was fairly anxious to just get out of this restaurant. I ordered dessert to go, paid the check and left.
Unfortunately it wasn't the romantic dinner experience we expected based on the online photos and was far from up to the quality expected of a Marriott, even a Marriott in the keys.
No attempts were made by the hotel or restaurant to make any kind of amends (except for the lovely bread bright very quickly to our table).
I feel like this is business school 101. We may not have had a perfect experience but had hotel staff immediately rushed in to comp us something nice, it could have turned this one star review into a five star review, which is just good business.