If I could give it zero stars, I would! We have been enthusiastic Residence Inn fans for years. But, this Inn had a broken door to the outside, a.c. that did not work, a dish washer that could not be used, I emptied garbage cans outside, a seriously dented refrigerator, and the list goes on. To housekeeping’s credit, the bathroom was clean and an effort to clean the carpet had been made despite stains and tears.
New management is desperately needed to bring things up to Marriott standards.

In July of 2021 we booked the 2 bedroom suite, their largest room, for 7 nights - we left after 4.

First, the good: the front-desk people were very friendly; management followed our initial request to leave the beds unmade upon arrival; the AC was cold; the hotel location was central yet quiet thanks to all the near-empty, big office complexes.

Now for the bad: daily towels (face, hand, bath, floor) were never provided - we had to beg the frontdesk every day - never even getting all that was asked for. This despite not needing any kind of bed service whatsoever - we handled that ourselves. So all housekeeping had to do was take our pile of used towels which we left outside in the linen bin, and replace them with new towels. Yet it was a constant struggle just for that.

The pool, basketball, fire pit and grilling area was a dump. Every detail was falling apart for lack of maintenance. The pool had to be closed on Sunday when an interior light broke off (again, apparently). When asked if another nearby Mariott had a pool we could temporarily use, management said no… yet other Mariotts with pools were in fact nearby. Luckily the pool was fixed Monday afternoon. Same goes for all greenery - weeds and overgrowth everywhere. Including massive sticker-bushes hanging into the pool area in a location anyone could easily walk into. Plus ants had invaded the pool patio. Even the dining area beside the lobby was literally hanging with dead bugs.

Each morning the pool gates were locked well past the 10am opening time. So we had to ask frontdesk to open them. Then we had to ask for pool towels because the pool towel bins were always empty. Then we had to clean the pool with a skimmer each morning because no one else was doing it.

The on-site washer and dryer facilities were disgusting - we opted not to use them despite our needing to.

As for the room - while big - it stunk of cigarette smoke despite being a non-smoking hotel. We had to use our own air purifier to help, because running the AC fan all day didn’t do enough. The dishwasher sprayers were broken - rendering it useless - but we tried to look past that by hand washing, asking for extra dish towels (and never receiving them) and buying a dish rack. The oven - a rarity in hotels and a major reason we picked Residence Inn - lacked any pans to use within the oven (the room was advertised as having them). So we called the frontdesk and they got the assistant manager on the phone, who told us that people provide their own oven supplies. He eventually agreed to locate an oven pan for us. The kitchen only had enough utensils for 3 people - not the 5 it can sleep. The soundproofing was also very weak because we heard every step our neighbors made above us (sometimes well into 3am).

Despite all these problems we were courteous and amenable - trying to make the best of it and enjoy our first vacation in 2 years.

The final straw came when the assistant manager suddenly approached us at the pool one morning as our son was swimming. His initial tone was aggressive and startled my wife. He then proceeded to scold us - that our daily towel needs were too much and not consistent (we only asked for the bare minimum we’d need: hard to understand why that is worse than consistency & waste). The housekeeping manager was silent behind him. He even told us to share towels because “that’s what other people do”. When it was clear this manager was not going to honor our requests for towels (6, for a room that sleeps 5; a reasonable request that a handful of week-long stays at other hotels over the years were totally fine with and never limited us on the number of towels per day) - we decided to end our stay immediately. The manager quickly said OK and offered no attempt to overcome this discrepancy. It was around 11:30am and we were checked out by 1:30pm (having to pack days worth of additional groceries, too). The next day we received an emailed receipt saying we checked out a day later at 9am - being charged a full extra night.

Management here at Residence Inn Willow Grove clearly care more about minimizing cost than they do about basic hotel maintenance and treating guests right.