This really a two part review as we snapped up two Dinner, Bed and Breakfast offers at the Marriot and at the Novatel in Cardiff. The second review I will be posting shortly with a comparison between the two hotels.
We have stayed in other Marriott hotels and always had quality and good service, we had booked an executive room which put us on the 8th floor. The hotel is attractive and seemed well maintained, our room was very comfortable although I fail to understand why they only give you one robe and slippers, guess you have to share. Normally in executive rooms you get free Internet access, so we were surprised at the fact you have to pay for it and also the lack of mineral water in our room, but the plus came in the form of the executive lounge. That is a big plus, we could pop in and make a coffee freshly ground from the machine, a small fridge was stocked with water and other soft drinks along with a nice selection of snacks and the days papers. We also had pre dinner drinks and canapés in there on the Saturday evening, a girl called Zoe was taking care of everyone and she was so nice and worked so hard.
We did note that on check in, we were not given any information on the executive lounge, it could so easily have been missed.
Our evening meal in the restaurant was the worst I have ever seen or tried to eat, the presentation was dreadful and my husband had the shoulder of lamb that was nothing but fat. We took this up with the gentleman serving who we think was the restaurant manager for that night. He needs better training he simply said sorry you could not eat it, that is how it should be, never have we had this happen, my husband should have been offered to choose something else from the menu, he decided to just move onto dessert, we love Creme Brûlée yet we both left them, at this point a lovely young lady serving them noticed, we told her what happened, she went away and came back to tell us they would not charge us for the glasses of wine we had.
It in no way made up for our evening, we just wanted a nice meal together.
We went back to our room feeling really let down, we decided we would watch a movie, that is until they wanted to charge £9 for it.
Breakfast next morning we good but not amazing, the pool is lovely, kept warm and clean as is the gym. We will use this hotel again, we will book the executive floor, we will do Bed and Breakfast and eat at Jamie Oliver’s or one of the other excellent restaurants in the area. We have had amazing food at County Hall Marriot in London, I know it is 5 star but surely there should not be such a difference.
