A Tale Of Two Hotels

David J. Danto

Travel thoughts in my own, personal opinion

eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD on

A Tale Of Two Hotels – October 2025

I just got back from a week in San Diego a city that earns its reputation as paradise. The weather, the culture, the food – it’s all wonderful. But with that beauty comes what locals call the “paradise tax.” Everything costs more, and sometimes that tax shows up in unexpected ways.

This trip was work-related – I was covering one of two big industry conferences that landed within weeks of each other. I’d already written a Dickens-style piece for my industry peeps called A Tale of Two Conferences, and my blog here last week about the tale of two Newark Airports, so when I reflected on my hotel stays, I realized I had material for another Dickensian sequel.

The Premium Stay – Marriott at the Marina

For the first half of the week, I was at the Marriott by the marina. The conference organizers were footing the bill and had essentially taken over the whole property. The room was beautiful: spacious, well-appointed, and with a balcony overlooking the water.

But beauty, as it turns out, doesn’t guarantee practicality. The bathroom was split in an odd way – the shower and toilet in one small room, the sink in another, with a door separating the two that was hinged clearly on the wrong side. Washing up meant realizing the towels were all across the barrier, hanging by the shower. The hook for a robe? Also stranded in the toilet room. One had to walk around the door to get between the two.

The layout problems were not confined to the bathroom. While the left side (my side) of the bed had a generous nightstand and a half-dozen outlets, the right side got a tiny table with no outlets anywhere nearby. It felt like the room was designed by two different people who never compared notes.

The Familiar Stay – Homewood Suites

When the conference ended, my wife joined me and we moved to a Homewood Suites, expecting something comfortable and functional: a living room, a full kitchen, and a reliable Homewood layout. We got the layout, but not the upkeep.

The first impression was the smell – a damp, mildewy odor that screamed “neglected air conditioner.” We reported it and the staff claimed to “air out the room,” but it barely helped. We wound up buying a can of Lysol and dousing the intake ourselves, while cracking open the windows as far as they would go (a whoppingly generous four inches).

That was just the start. On my side of the bed, there was a lamp with an embedded outlet, and another multi outlet device. On my wife’s side, the lamp with the outlet didn’t work – engineering had to come fix it.

Upon further inspection, the ceiling fan in the bedroom was dead; the flooring by the kitchen had chunks missing; the carpet by the bathroom had burn stains, the shower head resembled more of a trickle than a spray; and the living-room TV refused to function at all. By then, I was done calling the front desk. A quick inspection showed the hotel’s own cable box had been left unplugged by prior guests and unnoticed upon servicing the room (which was ironic considering my recent blog on the use of hotel TVs and my wife’s urgent desire to see her programs.) I crawled around to figure out the issue and plugged it in myself to get it working, but it was hard not to wonder how many other guests had just given up.

The Moral of the Story

So, one hotel gave me a gorgeous, well-maintained room that was oddly impractical. The other gave me a practical design that was falling apart at the seams. Between the two, it was a “choose your poison” experience. Maybe that’s just another form of the paradise tax – in San Diego, you pay for beauty one way or another.

This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions.

All image and links provided above as reference under prevailing fair use statutes.

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