I spent one evening at the Marriott Plaza in Buenos Aires, Capital Federal. The hotel is located in Plaza San Martin which is a very central and very historic part of the city. The Plaza de San Martin offers a wide variety of cafes, restaurants, shopping and tourist attractions. After a 4 hour car ride from Mar del Plata to Buenos Aires, my colleagues and I were looking forward to a comfortable evening stay at Marriott before departing back home the next day. However, we had quite a lengthy delay at check-in due to the receptionist requiring that we produce corporate IDs for our rooms. One of my colleagues forgot his ID and those of us who had IDs were not permitted to vouch for him so he got charged the regular rate. The only nice staff people we had were the hotel porters who were always helpful with our bags. The room I had was right smack in the elevator lobby area and you could hear the guest traffic all evening long. The room itself was clean with a king size bed small desk, color tv ( did not work though), and a large bathroom. A sign in the bathroom indicated that the water was safe to drink but a bottle of Evian is provided for $21 pesos. Internet hookup is available but at a substantial cost per day. Since we all had an evening flight back to the US, we requested a late checkout time in the morning to give us a little time to pack and get some lunch before leaving. When we requested the late check-out time, the hotel front desk gave us a disgusted look/reply. They were very hesitant to do it and we had to beg them. When we returned after lunch, we discovered that our room keys did not work anymore. I flagged down a hotel employee and she initially did not want to open the door for me. We told her that we had been granted late checkout and I gave her my name. She called downstairs but they could not find my name. I assured her that I was not trying to break in and she decided to open the doors for us. I could not wait to get out of there especially since I had an excellent stay at a nearby hotel a few days earlier. BTW, my colleague was not able to resolve his issue and ended paying the regular hotel rate. As we were leaving, one of the numerous staff loitering at the hotel lobby noticed that we had checked out. He made a beeline for us and asked if we needed a taxi to the airport. We said yes but that we were just going to get one of the numerous taxis running on the Calle Florida outside. He said that those taxis were not authorized to stop at the hotel and we could only use a taxi who was affiliated with the Marriott. Their official taxi to Ezeiza cost us $125 pesos. A normal taxi ride to the airport is about $90 pesos. So we got soaked again. I guess they do not take into account the ornery staff into their 5 star hotel rating.




