I wanted to quickly share about my recent experience staying at the Courtyard by Marriott Houston Downtown. When reflecting about the visit, it is a really interesting example of how a hotel’s guest services team can have very good execution, but it does not result in an enjoyable guest stay due to the hotel itself.
Why go to Houston?
Houston is not a place people go for fun. It is a massive sprawling city without a lot of tourist activities. My September 2026 trip to Houston was for a work conference. The Marriott Houston Downtown was a last minute booking about ten days in advance of my trip. Given the short notice, staying at the conference hotel was not an option. I booked the Courtyard by Marriott Houston Downtown because it was close to where I needed to be for work, and I trusted the Marriott brand. It’s interesting to note that the building the Courtyard is in is actually multiple Marriott brand hotels all separated by different entrances.
Experience at Courtyard by Marriott Houston Downtown
As a recovering Customer Experience (CX) technologist, who even worked at a company who served leading hotel customers, I found it fascinating to observe that the guest services team at the Courtyard Marriott Houston Downtown had an excellent execution of their role. They would ace every part of the post-visit guest survey. Their level of service was very good, and almost surprising given how terrible the physical hotel ended up being. They clearly took great care making sure they did what they could to welcome guests to the hotel.
The check-in counter was efficient. The guest services team immediately let me know that the items that I had shipped to the hotel had arrived and were ready for pick-up. The cleaning team was kind and courteous in the morning. There were earplugs provided in the room and a note offering the use of white noise machines.
The Courtyard by Marriott Houston Downtown even had a free happy hour with margaritas, chips and salsa. You can just walk up to the table, and pick up a drink to take back to your room after a long day.
Finally, when I let the team member know at the end of my stay that the thermostat was broken in my room, I immediately got Marriott points added to my account with a nice note. Hands down the team seems to really care— but do you know what?
Those positive guest services experiences still couldn’t compensate for the terrible experience with the physical hotel. The franchise owner for the building needs to focus on investing in fixing structural issues in the hotel to foster customer love.
I stayed in room 317 which was adjacent to the hotel gym and the outdoor pool. The room was large and spacious with a sitting area and extra long hallway. It had a working mini fridge but there was no safe. (So great for working moms who may pump while traveling, but not great for people who travel with nice jewelry)
While the thermostat indicated central AC, the thermostat did not really work. I set the thermostat for the room to 65— the coldest it would go— and the room still felt like a sauna… and no, I’m not quite at the hot flash stage of life.
Room 317 was also overlooking the above ground metro train tracks. Y’all, that metro train blasts its horn every few minutes when it goes by the hotel. The train also runs 24 hours a day. It was TERRIBLE. Ear plugs and my own White noise machine didn’t even put a dent in the noise. But you know what? It got worse— every 10 minutes or so it also sounded like somebody was dropping heavy weights in the gym all night too. It was like some evil demon was actively trying to make sure it was impossible to sleep in this hotel. It was so hot and noisy.
When I started to investigate in the morning, I observed that the room also had really old windows which clearly did nothing to minimize the train noise. Whoever owns the hotel needs to invest in some kind of noise cancelling window upgrade ASAP, or install ambient noise to fix the guest experience. They also need to fix the broken ice machine, and do general cosmetic updates to the interior spaces of the hotel.
If this information alone isn’t enough to sway you to pick a different hotel for your Houston stay, I wanted to also share about the Starbucks in the first floor of the hotel building. The Starbucks in the hotel was really basic so you could not get snacks with your breakfast order to help you power through the rest of your work day. If you want any fresh items, or even cake pops you are out of luck.
Lessons Learned:
- Don’t stay at the Courtyard by Marriott Houston Downtown until they make structural upgrades to the hotel.
- The Houston metro train is really loud so you really should avoid hotels near its tracks.
- You should always have a swim suit packed because you never know when the hotel pool will be the best feature of the property
Travel Gear:
- White noise machine: Should have brought a second one on this trip since one was not enough to make the room pleasant.
- Ear plugs: These are more comfortable than the ones the hotel provided.
- Instant coffee: After terrible sleep this helps make you human.
- Portable tea kettle: Given how dirty this hotel felt, there was no way I was trusting the in room coffee maker to be clean.
- Check out my Amazon Storefront for a full list of my product recommendations. Please know I can make a commission from products that help offset the cost of maintaining this blog.
Final Thoughts:
If you have studied the creation of guest surveys, how brands respond to feedback, recognize employees, and choose to earn customer love, then it is easy to see the Courtyard by Marriott Houston Downtown is an excellent example of how the guest services staff can do everything within their control to “get it right” with the customer, but still get bad marks because of items outside of their control.
While everyone seems to be focused on AI taking over the world, it’s important to remember that the hotel guest experience is still very much rooted in the non-technical world, and is a problem AI isn’t close to solving.
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