As a child growing up in Nashville, I’d lovingly gaze out of my parents’ car windows, driving past the iconic Union Station on a trip downtown. I thought it was the most beautiful building I’d ever seen. Fast forward 40+ years, I’m booking a hotel room on a return to my hometown to attend a childhood friend’s surprise birthday party.
I was so excited to finally walk inside the gorgeous lobby and spend three nights there as a guest with my SoCal boyfriend on his first visit to Music City.
Having learned that freight trains still travel through the station, I requested a quieter room on the opposite side of the hotel so we could get some sleep. The young woman at the front desk gave us a room over the tracks with a “view,” she said, which we visited with luggage in tow, making a U-turn back to the front desk to request the room that I asked for in the first place. Another agent was able to give us a room on the 5th floor which was what we had originally wanted. Not a great start after traveling all day from California, arriving late afternoon, hot and tired and in need of rest.
The 5th floor king room was nice with an 18’ ceiling and large windows looking out over Broadway and the train tracks. We could see the trains traveling north and south, but only heard the rumble of the engines below us, which was fine. The room was on the smaller side, with no place to put our luggage and no chair to sit in. You could only sit on the bed. The bathroom was very nice and modern, with a lighted makeup mirror and upscale toiletries.
That evening, while wandering around near the hotel, we discovered the Red Phone Booth speakeasy, which requires a secret number to be dialed into a rotary phone in order to access the private bar. We called the hotel for the number, and the front desk wanted us to come back to the hotel for them to give us the number. My boyfriend protested, asking for the front desk to give us the number over the phone as we were guests there (we had just checked in with the same agent about 3 hours prior), giving him his name and our room number so he could verify it. He reluctantly gave us the number and we were finally able to dial it and enter the speakeasy through a secret door, where we drank some very nice whiskey while relaxing on gorgeous leather sofas.
The next day, we forgot to ask for Housekeeping service (should we have to do this when we are paying $650+ a night?), so our room was not cleaned when we returned to the hotel around 3:15 pm, after an all-day trip to historic Franklin and Leiper’s Fork. We called the front desk and requested Housekeeping, and a sullen housekeeper came in about 15 minutes. My boyfriend asked her how long she needed, as we were going to the lobby to wait, and she rudely said, “Huh?” to him. He politely repeated himself, and she said about 10 minutes. When we returned to the room, the wastebaskets were not emptied; there was still a coffee cup ring on boyfriend’s bedside table; we were not given our two daily complimentary water bottles; and there was debris on the floor. Not an adequate service job for an alleged 4-5 star property.
On Saturday, it was raining, so we called the front desk to ask for an umbrella, as our flimsy travel umbrella had blown backwards in the wind and broken while caught out in a thunderstorm the night before. The agent asked for our room number and said he would hold the last umbrella they had for us. When we went to the front desk about 20 minutes later, not only did they not reserve it for us, but the agent told us that they don’t do that, who did we talk to, etc. There was only two of them, him and the other agent, but he didn’t bother to ask his colleague about it. Needless to say, we were not happy. The agent ended up comping us an umbrella from their small gift shop.
The bar is very nice, but the bartenders are inexperienced. One female bartender did not know what port wine was, and said they didn’t have it, but we could try a sweet Chardonnay, if we wanted. (I am not aware of any such thing; a Riesling, perhaps?). After asking someone else, she found the port and gave us two very large servings of it in red wine glasses. The following night, we ordered a lemon drop and a regular martini, and another inexperienced bartender gave us half a martini glass full of each beverage, but naturally charged us full price for the drinks. There’s also extra fees tacked on that we didn’t see anywhere else that added up to $10 to the bill.
Marriott, if you want to charge such high rates for rooms in this gorgeous historic hotel, please find better employees! The service was akin to a 2-3 star hotel, which is insulting given that you have rooms starting at $600 per night range, not including $60 a night for valet. This is an Autograph property! The valet department was excellent, btw, and obviously efficiently run by a different company than Marriott.
There are many nice hotels to visit in Nashville. We will not return to this one.
FR