I stayed 4 nights at the Courtyard when in Las Cruces for work.
There was a lot to like about the hotel. A lot.
The location is superb. The NMSU campus surrounds the hotel. You can walk to the football stadium. For those doing the tourist thing, Old Mesilla is maybe 5 minutes away by car.
The hotel itself is a newer iteration of the Courtyard design with noticeable extras. The huge outdoor pool is way better than you expect. Almost resort-like. The terrace is also nice. I've certainly stayed at hotels charging a nightly resort or destination fee with smaller and/or inferior spaces than the terrace and pool at the Courtyard.
Staff were generally good to very good. In particular, two employees at the front desk were excellent. Carlos checked me in. He was polite, professional and just hospitable. He was wearing a necktie and business clothing with an overall neat appearance. That's a welcome change from some Courtyards that allow staff to wear casual clothes to the point where as a guest you don't know if someone is staff or a guest. The other excellent front desk employee was Sophie or Sophia.
The Courtyard is fine for anyone coming and staying a night or two for work or anyone coming for a NMSU football game.
Just don't ask for anything and don't have any expectations. For those who ask for something or have some degree of expectations, the overall standard, execution and attention to details is below standard.
Here are the issues that I experienced:
None of the basic requests (100 percent feather pillows and extra towels) that were noted on my reservation and specified on my Ambassador profile were fulfilled.
The general manager sent an amenity consisting of a bottle of water and a bag of chips with a form-letter typed note to my room. Had she actually cared or appreciated my loyalty she would have looked at my Ambassador profile and saw that I don't need junk food.
No local newspapers were available in the lobby or anywhere in the hotel. I also didn't see any local tourist brochures or local information.
As I said, this is a newish Courtyard with some better than average aspects. It's almost a hybrid between a standard Courtyard and a full-service hotel.
Unfortunately, owners/management kept the standard Bistro concept. While fine for drinks, the food is extremely limited and not very good. Some Courtyards have a full-service restaurant. Not many but some. Given the location on the NMSU campus, it seems like a tremendous missed opportunity not to have a real restaurant or at least a better and higher quality food menu.
Housekeeping was inconsistent. There were also maintenance issues. While I received daily housekeeping, one day the housekeepers did not service my room until almost 4 pm. Cleanliness was so-so. The walk-in shower had signs of mold and mildew. There was also extensive hair in the shower, specifically long strands of hair on the wall-mounted dispensers containing shampoo, conditioner and body wash. Some of the fixtures had rust. Furniture in the room had visible wear-and-tear. As did some public spaces.
The rest of the room was clean and was appointed in the typical Courtyard manner. Wireless internet was sufficient. The TV was newer and huge with a good selection of channels. Air conditioning worked well. Noise insulation was very good, too. In terms of in-room amenities, my room had a Keurig coffeemaker. No complimentary bottles of water were provided. In the bathroom, I had a bar of soap, a small bottle of lotion, and another bar of soap by the walk-in shower.
While the outdoor pool is great, there's no bathroom at the pool or anyone outside on the terrace. So guests probably urinate in the pool since going to the bathroom requires you to walk inside wearing wet swimsuits. There was also no trash container at the pool. Only a bin for used towels.
I needed a pair of pants cleaned by the dry cleaner. The form in the closet is a photocopied slip of paper without any listed prices. I dropped off my pants in the laundry bag at the front desk. The vendor apparently refused to pick up the pants the first day, claiming they were busy. At the end of the second day the pants were returned by the front desk because the hotel couldn't get the dry cleaner to pick them up. What's the point of offering a service if you can't actually deliver on it? At the very minimum, the hotel should have tried a different dry cleaner or let me know sooner and I would have called around and tried to find an alternative dry cleaner myself. As a result, I missed a dinner reservation at an upscale restaurant because I didn't have appropriate pants for the restaurant.
Courtyard is one of the Marriott brands where Bonvoy elites don't get free breakfast. Instead, at check-in you can opt for $10 per person per day vouchers for redemption on food or drinks. I had two people in my room. So, I had $20 per day. At breakfast one day I was told I couldn't apply two $10 vouchers to one order even though I was entitled to redeem $20. I had to do two separate transactions, meaning my under $20 breakfast wasn't fully covered. And the prices on the menu for virtually all of the breakfast items are just a couple of dollars over the $10 voucher, so you can't actually get a breakfast item with coffee, tip, and tax with the voucher. Over $13 for a coffee and yogurt parfait. Even two vouchers doesn't cover the cost of two breakfast items and two coffees. Worse yet, my medium Starbucks coffee was only filled three-fourths of the way. So I didn't actually get a full cup of coffee. Another morning I had hair in the parfair that was ordered. Seriously. How does hair get in yogurt? In the future, I would skip the hotel's breakfast and drive 5 minutes to Starbucks or McDonald's. You can get a better breakfast sandwich and a cup of coffee for half of the price of the hotel.
At night, the bar opens at 5 pm. The dinner menu is very limited. Things like flatbread, burgers, a grilled chicken sandwich, and caesar. There were a couple additional options on the menu, but those were unavailable for a couple consecutive days. It seems like they didn't pre-order enough food ingredients for the occupancy. Between the end of breakfast and 5 pm, a couple of salads and parfaits are available from the lobby market. Additionally, the lobby market also sells beer and wine. It seems like on a Saturday with college football the bar should be open earlier than 5 pm. Or maybe have some pre-game promo or special.
Speaking of the NMSU football team ... the college takes over the hotel on game weekends. The team has a breakfast buffet right in the lobby and bar area, making it inconvenient for other guests to order or eat. Public spaces like the patio are closed down as the team watches movies on a big-screen TV. The limited-service bar/restaurant can be overwhelmed with players, coaches, and parents. Imagine wanting to use the pool or sit on the patio, enjoying a nice al fresco dinner only to discover an entire college football team has taken over the hotel without actually buying it out. Maybe they should require the college to buy-out the hotel? I know NMSU is obviously a good customer and a major stakeholder in the hotel. In this situation, it seems fair to require the school to buy-out the hotel.
After checking out and returning home, I discovered I left a blazer and dress shirt at the hotel. It took multiple phone calls and emails, including from Marriott's Ambassador Services, to get the items sent to me. No manager ever called me about this issue, despite being assured twice that a manager would call me by telephone. A hotel employee tried blaming Ambassador Services for the hotel's lack of responsiveness. The hotel insisted on me pre-paying for a shipping label but FedEx and UPS generally require weight to calculate shipping prices. I offered to pay by card or check whatever it cost. The hotel wouldn't agree to this. Finally, we settled on a fixed-rate USPS box that I pre-paid for. It took more than a day for the hotel to confirm that it was being sent. Just very frustrating. And frankly disappointing. For $9 and change, they easily could have sent it themselves and just billed me the amount.
Lastly, I booked a rate that included 2,000 bonus Bonvoy points for each night of my stay. I never received these points. Like the shipping of my left-behind clothes, I had to send several emails and have Marriott Ambassador Services contact the hotel at least twice to get the points posted to my account.
For the dry cleaning issues, housekeeping issues and the hair in the food, the hotel provided me with 10,000 Bonvoy points. A manager also offered to adjust my rate. I declined that offer because I was traveling for work and that was of no value. I told him I'd give his restaurant a second chance if he wanted to offer me a token discount on the meal. He offered a comped meal, which I accepted. I didn't ask for or expect a comped meal. Normally, when you say comped you expect a comped meal. I ordered a starter, a main course and 3-4 glasses of wine. It was never comped. It was billed to my room. At check-out, the overnight auditor/front desk clerk had to manually remove the food charges. He said he couldn't comp the alcohol. No big deal, though normally when someone offers a comped meal they mean a fully comped meal.
All things considered, the Courtyard has a lot going for it. Las Cruces doesn't have many hotels, despite a population of 100,000 and a state university. While probably the best chain hotel in the city, there are a lot of issues related to attention to details, attentive and engaged management, execution of amenities and services, etc. Pretty much everything I experienced could easily be fixed. I would have no problem giving the hotel a second chance if I returned to Las Cruces.
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