I had one of the best check-in experiences with Lance during my trip to Tampa. My flight was moved, so I arrived in Tampa at 1pm, three hours before check-in. Lance gave me a room on the 25th floor, away from the elevator (my preference), and I was in the pool by 1:20. Lance was a great conversationalist, and provided some useful insight on the local area.

The hotel itself looks really dated from the outside, but is totally amazing on the inside. The rooms were awesome, spacious, and well appointed - with a mini fridge to keep your water cold. My view was delightful. Most of the hotel staff were super nice as well. The pool was alright, a little cold, considering it was 92 in the afternoon. I usually never go to hotel pools because they always seem sketchy, but this hotel pool was clean and worth a swim. I went to the pool 4 times over the course of my stay.

I ate at both restaurants, and had a hotel catered lunch in the ballroom on the second floor that was quite impressive. The bar was nice, they made really nice martinis. The waterside grill was the best, especially dining outside. I had the Impossible Burger, with fries, and guacamole as an appetizer. The fries were seasoned with some grilled garlic at the bottom - nice. I enjoyed the martinis. I ordered a knob creek bourbon that cost me $26 (second night), and a Makers 46 that cost me $13 (first night)... I think I got duped on that knob creek. Not so good. I felt robbed.

One table over, a guy was ordering Caymus wine for his guests, and received imitation Caymus at the table. There was a kerfuffle that they were getting deceived. That was not so good either.

On my last night, my iPhone charger decided to stop working, so my phone did not charge overnight. My brother's phone battery always use to die on trips, and hotels always kept chargers on standby for those moments, sometimes the hotels don't give you the charger but they let you leave your phone at the front desk charging. Well, I went to the front desk, Lance was not there, but there was another guy, and he gave me so much grief, talking rather loudly, and making me feel stupid for asking if there was a way that I could get a little help charging my phone. I did not appreciate being patronized. How awful.

I would give this review 1-star based on that experience alone. Getting gyped on the bourbon was not great - there was no price transparency until the bill came.

So why leave a higher 4-star rating after that negative last day? Because the room was nice, the staff on my floor were always cheerful, and the check-in experience was superb.

I would suggest to the hotel to have price transparency for bourbon, buy some of those $0.99 chargers from eBay to lend out to patrons in their moment of sadness - even just for 20 minutes, and have that other front desk guy re-trained to learn how to talk to human beings nicely.

We stayed here for 2 nights this past weekend and weren't overly thrilled with the place for the cost. It was almost $500 for 2 nights in one of the Stay Well rooms. So not worth it. The stay well rooms are pretty much a joke. My husband said he booked a king room with a view and we ended up with 2 queens and a view of the construction and the buildings. Even getting the wrong room my husband is Gold Elite and we should have gotten an upgrade yet we never ever do. We didn't get anything at all for being Gold at this hotel. We usually at least get free breakfast at the Concierge Lounge but it was conveniently closed for the weekend. The only things that are in the stay well room is an air purifier, a little box to change the lighting and the vitamin c thing they just attach to the shower head. The air purifier was supposed to have essential oils in it to make the room comforting and I never smelled it once. The vitamin c thing didn't feel like it did anything but make your shower smell like an orange. And the lighting adjuster was just blah. The bed was pretty comfortable, which was also supposed to be a perk. The curtains kept a decent amount of light out but between the construction noise and people in the halls we still didn't get any sleep. We were "lucky" and received the first room beside the elevator so we got to listen to that ding all night long and then have people yelling on their phones at all hours of the night. I feel like if you're going to have a Stay Well floor it shouldn't have rooms right beside the elevator, it shouldn't have loud slamming doors and it should have very sound proof windows and walls. It was just a basic room with a couple electronics inside. It wasn't very updated either. The staff was friendly and the pool was pretty nice, too. But everyone goes down early to save the nicer chairs and then nobody is there for hours. We will probably never be back in the area but if we are we will probably try a different hotel.

The Marriott Hotel is a beautiful hotel however our stay with the hotel was not beautiful. The staff at the hotel that we encountered were very nice, very helpful and very friendly however the 1st room that we were given to stay in was a room in which nothing worked. In the room that we were given, the refrigerator did not work, the remote control did not work, and the room was very very small. We had initially asked for a room on a high floor and we didn’t get that, we got a room on a low floor with with a water view. Additionally, because we were on a low floor, we could hear the loud party going on downstairs at a nearby bar which made it very hard to sleep at night.

After going back and forth with the front desk about the non-working items in the room that they tried to fix but could not, we were finally moved to a high floor to a room in which everything worked, we wondered why they couldn’t do this at first? It was a huge inconvenience to have to move all our stuff to another room after we had just got settled in and it was very tiring because no one helped us move all this stuff to another room, we had to do it all ourselves.

Additionally, the whirlpool for the hotel did not work right and we were repeatedly told that someone was working on it, but we never saw anyone, and the whirlpool never worked. Finally, after asking the hotel front desk about the whirlpool several times, they finally admitted that the whirlpool had been broken for months.

Because we encountered so many problems, we contacted Marriott’s customer service department via email, and they did not answer. 4 days after we checked out, they sent an email and asked if they could help. There was a lot of noise in the hotel lobby , in which folks were loudly sawing, and hammering, and banging, then when that stopped, a very loud orchestra showed up playing very loud music in the lobby, we wondered why management would allow this set of people to do this, because it showed absolutely no respect for the guests who were staying there or the staff who were trying to working there.

The Hotel is beautiful, it is clean with lots of great attributes, but be prepared to encounter difficulties, unanswered questions, and loud noises if you choose this hotel to stay at.