this isa very nice well kept hotel
the grounds and gardens are outstanding
we really enjoyed our stay there .
if you are looking for all the excitement of the strip, this is not the hotel for you .
it is about a $50.00 cab ride into the strip .

My wife attended a conference at the JW Marriott. I joined her there for a few days. Overall, my experience was "mixed". I would not recommend it.

The hotel made a good first impression. Lovely grounds, very nice lobby area, pleasant check-in staff, and spacious well-appointed room & bath.

The longer I was there, the more that little things began to nag at me. A dirty, used wine glass that sat on a table by the elevator for more than 24 hours. The slow kitchen in the cafe. The cigarette smoke anywhere near the casino (which includes several of the restaurants). The cafe hostess who grunts and scowls at everyone she seats. The unsmiling housekeeping staff. The know-it-all jerk who drove me back to the airport on the hotel shuttle.

All in all, I think the issue must be the hotel management. The staff itself is mostly very pleasant and tries to give good service. But it's apparent that each staff member is doing what they think best, on their own initiative, with little structure or guidance from above. There's very little CONSISTENCY to the service. It's as if someone with experience managing a high-end resort wrote a manual and gave it to someone with no experience, then walked away. Even with the best of intentions, the inexperienced person will not be able to do well without some coaching.

The hotel is quite some distance from the Strip. We were able to "make do" with the free hotel shuttle, but its schedule was limited and we needed to supplement it with some expensive cab rides ($50 or so, one-way). Overall, I wouldn't recommend staying at this hotel without a car of your own.

The pool is spacious and beautiful. The poolside cafe was open on the weekend, but closed on weekdays (I assume this is a seasonal schedule).

The concierge staff are very very good. They were able to help my wife and me with several recommendations and bookings.

We ate at several of the onsite restaurants. The Promenade Cafe is adequate for breakfast, but very very smoky, since it overlooks the casino area. The Irish pub is okay. The nice Italian restaurant isn't so nice. The Waterside Cafe (poolside) is good when it is open. Ceres Restaurant is very good, both for dinner and for breakfast. The Rampart Buffet is adequate, especially for the large number of retirees using their casino membership cards for a discount. The Japanese restaurant looks nice, but we didn't have an opportunity to try it.

The casino doesn't seem to under the same management as the hotel (maybe that's just my imagination). It caters to the locals, not the tourists. Small, smoky, filled with retirees.

Overall, I just don't think the hotel is one of Marriott's best. I'm not really sure that I'd even call it one of Marriott's good ones.

I stayed in the hotel in the Palm Tower to 2 nights. I did not smell cigarette smoke anywhere in Palm Tower, but the Casino was a little smoky. I actually enjoyed the casino because I am not much of a gambler and the people working the tables were more than happy to guide me along and teach me some things. Also the minimum bets are lower than you find on the strip.

The room was nice, but the TV was old. I am surprised they have not upgraded them yet. Also as a FYI, the best way to get from the airport to the JW Marriott is to take a hired car from the airport. It was $45 when I was there. People who took cabs spent anywhere from $50 to $65.

The only reason I stayed here was because it was a business trip. If I was on a personal vacation, I would stay somewhere on the strip.

This is the place to skip when going to Vegas. They should rip the "JW" off the building as this place is barely a Marriott in terms of quality.

I'll start with the grounds - they happen to be nice. And the staff was very friendly.

The rooms were a contrast in good and bad.
I'll start with the good:
-Great bathrooms, including jacuzzi tub and dual sinks.
-Comfortable beds.
-Breakfast buffet at Ceres - not a huge selection, but high quality.

Now the bad:
-The dirty, used bathrobe hanging in my room when I arrived (wonder what else wasn't cleaned?).
-If you ask for a foam pillow, you'll be sleeping on a lumpy log.
-The tv's suck. They're the old, monstrous 32" tube tv's (haven't heard of flat panels I suppose) and depending on the station, you may very well get humming sounds and ghosted images. This was a problem mostly with the broadcast networks. The signal's been split way too many times.
-The work area is atrocious for a conference hotel. I had to crawl under the old desk to plug in my laptop. The desk and chair were not ergodynamic and actually incredibly uncomfortable to work at for any stretch.
-The "free" gym may have been the worst hotel gym I have ever seen. I walked in an walked right out again. The spa gym, which is an astounding $25/day to use, was much nicer, but with low-end cardio machines and deflated workout balls (they couldn't find the pump). The individual tv's had the same problems with many of the broadcast networks.
-The casino was terrible. At all hours of the day, this disgustingly smoky room was filled with old people who parked their walkers next to the slots and puffed away while gambling the social security check. It really looked like death's waiting room.

Now, when I spoke to the front desk, they were very nice (really, all the staff was great) they comped the gym for me and gave me some points for my troubles, but this is one property I won't be visiting again.

Overall, this place is to be skipped since there are so many other, and much better, options in Vegas.