I stayed at Treasure Bay just after the July 4 weekend holiday for two nights. For those of you that don't know, the hotels in Biloxi are participating in a promotion through the Mississippi tourist bureau for a $50 free gas/gift card, two night minimum stay required. The card is redeemable at a Kangaroo convienence store in the general Biloxi/Gulfport area. You must make the reservation through the tourist bureau in order to qualify, not through the hotel directly.
As far as my experience with this property, I reviewed this property last year for a one-night stay, this is my second stay at this hotel (two nights this time). I can honestly say from the first to the second stay I have seen a considerable decline in the staff as far as friendliness, a desire to please the customer, and correct performance of duties. With respect to the hotel itself, the property is in fairly decent shape (except for the elevators), the rooms are recently renovated and are well apportioned and eye-catching (see my previous pictures from November, 2007).
Security guards abound at this hotel, the ones I saw doing lobby duty were noticeably unfriendly, bordering on surly. When I was bringing my laptop case to the guest elevator on unpacking the car, I was stopped by one security guard in the main lobby and asked if I was a guest. When I replied in the affirmative & showed my room key I was allowed to proceed.
Housekeeping staff this time around were not performing to minimum expectations. I found a drinking glass the first night that had been previously used by the last guest and just had a cover placed on it. Naturally, I set out the glass for the room make-up next day along with the one remaining glass we had (which we used). Well, neither glass was changed out by Housekeeping the next morning, the bed was not made correctly, and we didn't receive towels to replace what was used and left on the floor from the last night. We ended up shanghai-ing a housekeeper from an adjoining area and getting a hallway exchange for my glasses, plus towels to replace what had been removed & not brought back (the housekeeper assigned to our area had left).
There are two guest elevators serving the floors, during my stay I was actually stuck in one elevator for a short period of time since the doors refused to open at the lobby level. I had to pry the heavy doors open by hand to exit. That elevator was removed from service, leaving one elevator to serve eight guest floors for the rest of my stay. To say things were moving slowly would be an understatement (housekeeping & staff were also extensively using this elevator as well as handling casino & restaurant traffic). Even with two elevators working expect a wait to get to your floor during peak hours.
It was difficult to attract the attention of the front desk & gift shop staff as they were easily distracted by personal phone calls and chit-chat with other employees. The desk was also a busy place, apparently so busy in fact that the staff couldn't take the time to make eye contact or give you a friendly greeting. In fact, most all of the staff was neutral at best with respect to friendly interaction. No smiles, no greetings, the entire time we were there the general sense we received from the employees was "don't bother me". The only friendly people in the whole establishment we found were the 2nd floor Casino cashiers. We didn't try any of the restaurants this time based on the posted prices, we drove out and ate elsewhere.
Water pressure left something to be desired. It varied considerably and trying to get consistent hot water on the 6th floor was a problem. The water pressure for the shower was borderline unsatisfactory, there was flow but not too much of it.
I tried the pools on this visit. The upper level pool has a nice spill-over fountain to the lower level. The lower level pool had something that looked like clay deposits at the waterline on the tile at the end closer to the hotel, it was yeucchy looking. Pool cleaners need to do a better job. Both pools are shallow, less then 4 1/2 depth at the deepest. No child pool, they all used the main pools. One item to note for this property, there is no hot tub or Jacuzzi for guests in the pool area, if you expect this amentity you will be disappointed.
The beds between my first & second visit had become noticeably more soft (probably from use), in fact so soft that my back was killing me the next morning. The air conditioning in the rooms works very well, in fact so well that if you want AC while you sleep you will probably need to use the decorative, HEAVY comforter to stay warm. Blanket? What blanket? There wasn't one in the room.... we looked.
In summary, the property itself is still fairly nice with a few exceptions. The people side of the business needs some serious, serious work. Neither myself or my wife would stay again at this property unless the people problems are fixed. Nice people that do their jobs correctly can make up for a lot of property problems.