JW Marriott Marco Island Beach Resort

Water views at the beach are blocked by a first row $500 per day sun tents. The next rows are beach lounge chairs that are packed together 18” from next guests. The message is spend the $500 for a tent or enjoy the Jersey shore 4th of July experience as part of your luxury hotel beach experience. Never seen anything like it.

I had never stayed at a JW but always associated the name with luxury. Sadly, that was not our experience. I felt compelled to write a review so that others don’t spend their hard-earned money here like we did. The towers need a serious refresh - dirty paint and stained carpet in the halls. We splurged on the oceanview room…not worth it. A few minutes after getting to our room, I noticed my toddler licking something he found on our bed. It was a Zyn pouch. Another one proceeded to fall on the bed so we looked up to find multiple Zyn pouches stuck to the ceiling. Ew. Bathrobes were full of holes. The walls were thin and every time my three young kids made a noise, the people in the room next to us banged on the wall. The WiFi was horrific, as others have noted. We felt like prisoners in our room so we tried to spend minimal time in it. Moving on to the pools and beach…if you don’t pay the exorbitant fee to reserve seating, you’re stuck waiting in a line for 30-45 minutes at 7:15 am to get chairs. Not the most relaxing vacation mornings. We shelled out the money for oceanfront reserved chairs. We were told that they had drink service but no one came to offer us anything the ENTIRE day. On day 2, we opted for the tiki hut (which costs a brutal $700-ish a day), assuming we’d get decent service there. We got there at 8:30 am and stayed until about 4, and the drink/food cart came to us only one time. I ordered a pina colada and was told by the server that it would take so long that I would be better off walking back to the pool bar to get it myself, so I did. What did I get out of the mandatory 20% gratuity (which was like $100)? Literally nothing. Also, the staff get around the beach using very loud 4-wheelers, adding to the already busy, chaotic atmosphere. The pools were absolute chaos. The hotel sells large pool rafts (easy money grab, I guess). These rafts made the already incredibly crowded pools ten times tighter given that I had to navigate through loads of kids on giant flamingo and turtle rafts in the water. We could not get reservations at a single hotel restaurant. I guess we had to book those weeks in advance. All that to say, the beach is gorgeous. Crystal clear water and white sand. The hotel pools are lovely in theory. The arcade is really cool for the kiddos. The food is pretty good. I don’t fault the staff - they were, for the most part, doing the best they could with the crowds. This is just a classic example of ownership and management prioritizing profit at the expense of a decent customer experience. Not a 4-star experience, which hurts even more given that we paid 5-star prices.

We had a great time in Marco Island and at the JW. This review is mainly to give a huge shout out to Linda B and Janine in concierges! They were super helpful with any questions we had during our stay and Linda was very informative from the beginning stages of planning our trip. Highly recommend stopping by and chatting with them during your stay. The amenities were great. Nice to have food options ( although pricey) on the resort. The beach and beach service was fabulous as well. Pools are great but get crowded and if you do not get in line to get a chair or pay extra to reserve one you are running a race to get a chair and it is the last thing anyone wants to do on vacation. There has got to be a better system for this. The rooms are old and tired and way overpriced for what they are. They need updated.

What a great experience. Sean greeted us each morning by name and with a smile. Truly made our trip exceptional and memorable. The lounge chairs and umbrella made our days at the beach perfect. Thanks Sean!

Beautiful beach resort with great service. Sean at the Sirene beach was so friendly and so helpful. He was always checking in to see if we needed anything.