what area of the world you stayed at?

“Last few years” goes from now to peak covid lockdown, so it’s pretty meaningless.

Had awful experiences in: Washington State (all over), Silicon Valley, Tampa Bay, Dallas, and Salt Lake City. Mostly Marriott-owned places FWIW, but I checked and all the surrounding hotels had the same issues. The staff at the hotels were nice and they were doing their best, but they were hilariously understaffed.

I stayed in a few non-Marriott hotels in northern Japan and didn't have any trouble there beyond the normal Japanese hotel badness (they're clean, but insanely cramped, expensive, and uncomfortable)

Sounds like an easy ask for a room upgrade or did they just not care?

What do you mean? I should call them and ask to upgrade my room?

Well, that's a good idea, but... What's the point? They don't have any rooms that are clean or sections of the hotel that are well-staffed

But at least you get a more luxurious dusty room?

Haha, that's a good point. Plus it might trigger someone's KPI dashboard or something. I'll call and complain next time around

Unfortunately the hospitality industry has had a harder time recovering from COVID -- most of the managers are fresh out of college and have little to no underlying experience in managing properties, and it's so bad that Hilton and Marriott aren't doing "brand assurance" audits (ensuring that the properties are up-to brand standards) until the end of 2024/early 2025 because hotel owners have pushed back so hard.

My SO and I stayed at a Waldorf Astoria a few weeks ago and they managed to screw up the stay so badly that we'll probably never go back to that specific location ever again -- the response that we received from the staff was so bad I was looking on LinkedIn to see if I had any friends who were still at Hilton Corporate to help me get the local property to fix their screw up (charging my credit card $10k for a $2800 stay because someone fat-fingered a $100 nightly charge into a $1000 nightly charge) because the local management just couldn't do anything.

Good lord. That's the sort of thing I would give the hotel one chance to fix. If not, charge back.