Marriott's Aruba Surf Club

Marriott’s Aruba Surf Club

The Quality of Rooms and Customer Service at this Resort are Abysmal!

We have been to this resort previously and had a great time, however, it is clear that Marriott Vacation Clubs has not kept up with the maintenance here. We had paid for an ocean view villa, but were instead put in a room with a view of the building’s air conditioners, another building and the pool (see photos from my balconies). This would have been acceptable (but not great) if I had paid for a garden view room. I thought a mistake might have been made by the concierge team and the front desk staff so I called the front desk and asked to be moved to an ocean view room. I was informed that I was in an “ocean view” room and that the room type was a category, but that it was not indicative that my villa would, in fact, have an ocean view. I told the front desk that this explanation was nonsensical and I was informed that they were sorry, but that there was nothing that they could do to assist us.

Besides the issues with our view, the cleanliness and state of our villa was seriously sub-par. The shower in the master bedroom had standing water as it did not drain properly and the tiles were chipped in multiple places. In another bathroom, the toilet did not work. The dishwasher also was broken and flooded our kitchen. The floors has food crumbs and streaks of dirt all over the place. After I reported all of these issues to the front desk manager – I asked to be moved again and we were again refused. We had engineering in our villa 4 times the first day to attempt to fix all of the issues (including the installation of a replacement dishwasher). They were able to fix some issues, but not all. I was so frustrated by the lack of assistance from the resort staff by this point that I end up spot scrubbing the floors of our villa and sweeping it myself.

While the pool and lazy river area are quite nice – the new chair tag policy is beyond inconvenient and there were always few chairs available and many tagged chairs that were unoccupied all day.
We have been Marriott Vacation Club (MVC) Owners since the mid-2000s and it has been sad to see the lack of consistency in quality from resort to resort since the organization broke off from the Marriott hotel corporation entity. Some resorts are great and others are not.

Basic bottom line – if you are coming to Aruba and wish to stay at an MVC resort – I would recommend that you stay at the Marriott Ocean Club and not the Marriott Surf Club. You will have a much better experience at the Marriott Ocean Club as the customer service and room quality (especially the views) are far superior.