This review is the final installment of the Cleveland Trifecta

A programming note: Being that one of the goals of this site is to avoid becoming a “rant blog,” I’ll apologize for my three most recent reviews. (Those two links are only coincidentally related to computer topics — they’re on the first page of google results for “rant blog.” You guys strike me as the type that check your ‘external page links’ section of your log analyzer, so that’s why you’re getting some hits from this crazy, random site) Upon deciding to review a collection of three Cleveland-related things, I didn’t realize that even though I was planning on negative reviews, my opinions weren’t creatively negative. There’s nothing wrong with negativity, but unfortunately, the way that the Cleveland items were bad was more in the “disappointed” way than the “this sucks more than anything has ever sucked before” way. So, with that in mind, on to the last Cleveland-related review.

The Cleveland Marriot at…

With a ridiculous name like “The Cleveland Marriot Downtown at Key Center,” I should’ve known something was up. I have exceedingly low expectations when it comes to hotels. I’m even less of a snob about hotels/motels than I am about restaurants, and the fact that I consider hotels and motels to be in the same category should let everyone know how I go about choosing lodging. Just like the ChopHouse & Brewery, prices were high and because of that, so were my expectations. There was a special group discount rate due to the eye show, but due to the fact that it was very much in the middle of “metropolitan” Cleveland, and was (at least superficially) rather fancy, I had high expectations, as I’m sure that the Marriot expects that of their customers.

Even though work paid for the stay, I’m still hesistant to even spend someone else’s money for a hotel over $75/night, much less the Marriot’s $160. Much of that price is due to the fact that, again, it’s in the middle of downtown, but still, it’s Cleveland. In all fairness to the hotel, I’m not really the target market; I travel on “business,” but I’m still rather cheap thrifty, so I’m not the type to rave about the quality of the food brought by room service, if only for the fact that I could never justify spending that sort of money to eat-in (or out, for that matter). Regardless, whether or not I’m part of the “target market,” I was staying at (deep breath) The Cleveland Marriot Downtown at Key Center.

The Key Center is one of the modern-looking skyscrapers that I talked about in my review of Cleveland, and the “Marriot Downtown” is, obviously, a hotel that occupies a fair amount of space of this skyscraper (It’s a Cleveland-sized skyscraper, so 57 floors, not anything really big but still tall enough to make you dizzy when looking up at it from the ground.

The hotel itself had doormen, a concierge, and all of that fancy stuff, so again, even though I wasn’t really planning on using those services, I can’t hold it against the hotel for offering them. My room was on the 15th floor, facing the lake (and Browns Stadium), so the view was nice, but being that I was there for work, it’s not like I really spent that much time in the room, anyway (again, not the hotel’s fault). The bed had about 10 pillows of pretty much every shape and size (apparently, an obscene amount of pillows is par for the course in “fancier” hotels these days), and the bed was comfortable, but not Tempurapedic comfortable, but no hotels have beds that nice, anyway.

At this point, I guess I’m really just reviewing this hotel based on how much better $160/night is compared to ~$70/night. Having stayed at a hotel in that latter price point a couple weeks earlier, I was expecting more and better, beyond the convenience of not having to commute to/from the hotel to the convention center. I guess it’s been said that the more expensive hotels are, the more you have to pay for conveniences. The $70 hotel offered both wired and wireless internet access for free, while The Cleveland Marriot Downtown at Key Center offered a free “demo” of TV-based internet, and of course, the “demo” simply said “It’s the Internet — On Your TV!!! Only $9.95 per day!!!” Wired and wireless access were also $9.95 per day. I guess it’s a matter of the “businessmen” that need an internet connection will pay for it, even if it’s $19.95 per day, but it strikes me as cheap. Is that the only complaint I have about the hotel, no free internet access? Well, I didn’t end up buying it any of the days, but it definitely would have made my job simpler, as some doctors had questions about content on the website and so on.

The Cleveland Marriot Downtown at Key Center receives three stars due to the fact that even though it was rather pricey, they skimped on the fact that if they consider themselves to be the “business traveller’s destination” (my words, their insinuation), most all business travellers have some sort of need for an internet connection, and charging for it on top of a rather high daily rate only serves to make the hotel look cheap, not accomodating. Also, perhaps even more damningly, that insufferable dropping of the “the” in The Cleveland Marriot Downtown at (where’s the “THE?!”) Key Center” and the fact that they always include “The” at the beginning really grinds my gears.