I know most people really like staying here, and I thought I would too. In many ways, it was ideal for our week. The location was perfect for my needs on this trip, the room was quiet and mostly clean, and the basic room features were great (having a kitchen area, primarily), as I always find to be the case in a TownePlace Suites.
Now for the down sides: On our first day at the hotel, one of us put out the "do not disturb" sign in the morning. When we were ready for housekeeping service, we took the sign off the door. Apparently, it was too late in the day for housekeeping to stop by, which was okay with me. For the remainder of our stay (two more full days plus another morning), we did not receive any housekeeping services at all, which I found to be unusual for this level of hotel. Not even a check-by to see whether we needed more towels. The trash cans were full to the top by the time we left, but I was too busy with my work meetings in town to be bothered with asking the front desk for help.
The carpet was pretty worn (and maybe quite dirty...hard to tell for sure given the pattern, but it looked dingy in any case). The dishwasher wasn't working right, and there was a pool of dirty water in the bottom of it. I tried to get it to drain with no success. I washed dishes by hand rather than risking getting sick from the water in the machine. The desk was damaged, and the TV remote would do everything except turn the TV on and off. The counter top in the kitchen area had big coffee smears on it (not stains...just puddles of dried up coffee). The valve in the shower worked on a long delay, so I spend almost a shower's worth of time just getting the water to an acceptable temperature.
One of the mornings we were there, one of us went downstairs just prior to the published finish time for breakfast, and all of the food had already been cleaned up and the cabinets and fridge locked. I can certainly understand why this would have been the case in some ways, but I'm not accustomed to nicer hotels closing down breakfast before the scheduled end time has arrived.
One up-side was the staff. Those I encountered were helpful and friendly, as I've come to expect when staying at Marriott properties. Another nice aspect of our room was its size. It was spacious and gave us plenty of room to spread out. Unfortunately, the counter space in the bathroom vanity area was far too small to fit my normal toiletries there. I also didn't care for having one electrical switch outside of the bathroom operate the light in the bathroom, the fan in the bathroom, AND the lights in the separate sink/vanity area. I'm not a fan of giving someone outside of the bathroom the ability to turn the lights out on me while I in there, even if it's by accident. It also made it so that any time we had the lights on above the sink/vanity, we had to listen to the noise of the bathroom fan.
Overall, I was disappointed at my experience here. One might say that it was my responsibility to report all of the issues I encountered so that the hotel would have an opportunity to address them for me, but when I'm on business trips I often go at a dead run from eyes-open to early the next morning, and most often I simply don't have the time or energy to deal with maintenance issues on the hotel's behalf. I assume that most of the problems here have to do with its close proximity to Boise State University and, I would imagine, a heavy student and athletic events clientele. When I return to Boise for work, I'll stay elsewhere.
