Marriott’s Marbella Beach Resort Timeshare Termination

We are Marriott timeshare owners and traded a great week at KoOlina in Oahu to come to their property in Marbella ´Spain. This is not a resort that I would return to and cannot recommend it to others. Major items: we traded an ocean view two bedroom condo for what was to be an equal exchange. Our room is on a service alley with lots of zooming service trucks (noise!, fumes! at all hours) over the laundy (more noise and commotion), the room had not been used in quite awhile (stale air, dirty floors, shower not working, air conditioning not working,) and our unit was one the few that backed up to the adjoining resort that had a wild party going all weekend (LOTS MORE NOISE UNTIL 5.30 IN THE MORNING) The phones do not work – impossible to call home to the US without operator assistance (extra charges). ´Cmon guys, this is supposed to be a Marriott, not a Motel 6.

Oh, and then there is the restaurant – 20 minutes to get coffee (with only 6 tables occupied), and 10 more to get milk for the coffee. The short order cook (no need to call her a chef) could not figure out how to cook an egg if her life depended on it – one order was way overcooked hard lifeless eggs, and the other was an omelet that she insisted on smashing and turning out half raw with oozing raw egg flowing over the plate. This is not a restaurant I would recommend to anyone. Heck, even I can cook an egg right!

Not worth the money, a real scam, and uncooperative management that ignores real valid concerns. Move us to a decent room? what a laugh. What is clear is that if you make them think you want to buy a condo week, you get the good rooms. If you are an – and this is a direct quote from them – ¨¨if you are an American that doesn´t want to buy in Europe, then we just don´t really want to bother…¨ I guess an investment in Marriott is not really an advisable recommendation either. The only way to get their attention is to pretend that you may want to buy into the resort, and then all doors are open. Otherwise, you risk being shunted to the out-back rooms on the service alley and have to put up with noise, surly staff and really substandard accommodations.

First thing you need to know is that the property is not a division of US-based Marriott Hotels so don’t expect that quality of service. The pool and room were very nice. However, the website depiction of a large, beautiful, blue water beachfront is completely misleading. One of the worst “beaches” we have visited in the world. The water is very shallow for approximately 200 ft out and the entire area is mostly jagged rock and ledge. It is virtually un-swimmable. Also, guests who rent lounge chairs are corralled by a thick rope and crunched together within inches of one another. Additionally, many of the guests occupying the lounge chairs were heavy smokers. Not conducive to a comfortable experience for anyone, especially children. Management is completely unsympathetic to our complaints/disappointment and refused any sort of justifiable refund but for an insulting 10% which we refused since we came for the beachfront experience rather than to spend our entire time at a pool at garden apartment complex half way around the world.

We stayed at Marriott’s for few days only as we didn’t really like it so we had to move. At arrival, we were impressed by the beautiful reception just to find out our room was miles away in what seemed to us like a cellar. It had no view whatsoever, it was ridiculously tiny and overlooking the kid’s pool. Definitely what we were hoping for. Then there was some misunderstanding to do with the food as we had a little kitchen unit in the room it turned out there is no room service or something. To be honest, at that point we were already so agitated we wanted to leave after we spent time in the indoor swimming pool with someone swimming with full clothes on and shoes! We packed and moved straight away. Definitely not going back.