After spending the 2018 winter in Jamaica, we decided to visit a new Caribbean island, and chose Aruba in 2019 winter, a favorite amongst our friends and family. Featuring picturesque beaches with beautiful soft sand and calm clear waters, it is definitely easy to see why that is the case.
As we discuss a bit more below, Steve had a ton of Marriott points to use this time around, so our focus turned to their portfolio of properties, even though they do not offer all inclusive packages on points bookings. At the time when we had booked the property, Marriott was still using their old award chart, with year round fixed pricing and offering a 5th free night on a rewards booking, which was a pretty great deal. While Marriott still offers the 5th night free, they unfortunately changed to variable pricing for reward nights, and will now charge more points per night for the same room during busy season, which was the time we went.
We ultimately chose the Aruba Marriott Stellaris Casino and Resort which had some of the best reviews across Tripadvisor, Google and elsewhere and was 10,000 points per night less expensive than the Ritz 200,000 vs 240,000 for 5 nights including Marriott’s 5th night free promotion), it seemed like a no brainer, that is, until we made it to the property (unfortunately the points per night have increased over the past year at both properties, please see Marriott’s website for new pricing).
Ultimately, everything about our experience was a level below what we enjoyed at the Hyatt Rose Hall during our Jamaica vacation the previous year, as multiple small issues added up to take away from some very good moments we had at the Aruba Marriott Resort and Stellaris Casino, read on to find out why!
HOW WE BOOKED
Our original plan was to stay at the Hyatt in Cancun. Unlike Marriott, Hyatt allows you to book an all inclusive on points which is a huge benefit! That said, we decided to save our stash of Hyatt points for another time and switched focus to our large stash of Marriott points.
Marriott had recently bought Starwood Preferred Guest’s hotel and loyalty program and when the two programs merged Steve’s stash of approximately 63,000 Starwood points converted to 189,000 Marriott points, almost enough for our 5 night stay. One night at the time was 50,000 points per night, but as mentioned, if you book 4 nights on points, Marriott gives you a 5th night for free, an excellent value!
The normal cash rate for a standard room during the time we stayed started at $550 per night and the last few rooms that were available before our stay were going for $800 or $900 per night. We definitely came out way ahead by booking for an average of 40,000 Marriott points per night after accounting for the free night!
We topped things off by signing up for the Chase Marriott card (insert link) which was offering a 75,000 point sign up bonus at the time and comes with a free anniversary night of up to 35,000 points in value (a tier below the Aruba Marriott Resort). Marriott also has an upper tier credit card offering a free night up to 50,000 points in value, automatic Gold status which allows for room upgrades if available, and a $300 credit through American Express (insert link) to stock up on Marriott points. Marriott also partners with Chase’s portfolio of credit cards and you can top up your Marriott point account by transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards points through the Ultimate Rewards portal into your linked Marriott account if you’re short on points.
As mentioned above, however, Marriott has since switched to variable point pricing. While at the standard rate, Marriott offers the Aruba Marriott Resort at 50,000 points per night, their peak rate is 60,000 points per night, putting it out of reach of the free night on the upper tier card. Marriott now prices a standard night at 60,000 points and we suspect most nights during the busy northern winter season (beginning of November to the end of March) will feature the higher peak pricing.
ARRIVAL AND CHECK-IN
Upon originally booking our reservation, we let the Aruba Marriott Resort know we would be arriving around 2pm. Again a day or two before we arrived, we were offered the option to Pre-Check in online and advised the hotel we would arrive 2 hours before the scheduled check in time. We do recognize this is at the discretion of the hotel.
Since we were arriving on a Tuesday, we thought our chances of having the request honored were good, but we would have no such luck and had to wait another hour and a half for our room. After waking up at 4am for a four and a half hour flight, this definitely was not a pleasant start to our trip, especially because the staff did not really offer us much while we waited, simply implying we should start spending money already at the hotel bar.
A drink voucher while waiting would have been a nice touch since in theory we were paying $550+ per night to stay at the hotel. We were not the only ones to suffer this fate though, we met someone who held top tier Titanium Elite status arrived around noon and had to wait 4 hours before her room was available. The culprit, a large corporate client had booked up half the rooms. It seemed to be standard operating procedure for the Aruba Marriott Resort throughout the stay, the corporate clients would always win out over the individual guests, more on that in a second.
To make matters worse, we were greeted by the single coldest reception agent we have ever experienced in our life. She almost seemed to enjoy increasing our level of discomfort as we waited, appearing bothered when we asked her for an update on our room, and we unfortunately dealt with her again on two other occasions. Her demeanor remained unchanged and it made us question how management at a hotel like that could make such a major mistake by putting someone like that at their front desk to greet guests upon arriving in Aruba.
THE ROOM
When we finally made it to our room, we were relieved to change in to proper Aruba attire. While the room itself was all right, it certainly did not blow us away like our room at the Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall in Montego Bay.
The bathroom featured two sinks which was a nice Hyatt like touch, but there was only a stand up shower and no tub. The bathroom was in a weird L shape and part of the space was dedicated for a large walk-in closet. The bedroom/living area was spacious enough for two people and the bed was comfortable. One oddity, the locker was built into a drawer below the television, though it was secured in place.
The best part of the room was the standard size balcony. Not as impressive as the Hyatt Rose Hall, but all were angled to give a partial sea view which was sweet as we were able to enjoy a couple sunsets together from the balcony.
THE PROPERTY
The property itself was nice, but I would not say it was overly impressive, even compared to the Hyatt and Hilton in Aruba. The family pool area was nice and green and the pool itself featured an in pool bar, a bit bizarrely. I get that parents deserve a break as well, but it is a bit hard as a couple to enjoy a drink when kids are screaming and splashing right behind you in the pool.
The only reason we tried the family pool the first day was due to Marriott closing the adut pool two hours early to set up for a corporate event. To make matters worse, the corporate event was only attended by roughly 10-12 individuals, including some high level person from Marriott corporate, which quite honestly is absolutely ridiculous. While we do not work in hospitality, it seems crazy to inconvenience dozens of paying guests like that for a small gathering.
The rest of our days were spent most of our time at the adult pool with the excellent staff located there. While there was no in pool bar, they went out of their way to take care of us around, during and after the 12-1pm and 3-5pm happy hours. I will say, you need to get there early in order to get shade or an umbrella, probably by 8:30am. Most umbrellas are reserved for Tradewinds Club guests, Marriott’s sort of all inclusive option. If you did not fork over the extra $200-250 per night (do not do it, it is not worth it), you can either hope to snag one of the few non-reserved umbrellas or reserve a cabana for an additional fee.
Everything at the property seemed to be that way. “Thanks for paying a lot of money to be here, now give us some more”. It is definitely not a good feeling for sure, though they surely do not seem to be hurting for repeat business, which I must admit is a bit confusing. Even the beach palapa system was like this. Get on the app right at 4pm the day before to reserve one, or show up right at 6:30am to secure one. If you really want to make sure you get one, well of course, you could pay to reserve it. While the beach and water were beautiful, we spent more time walking along the sea side as opposed to going in due to the Marriott’s crazy system.
FOOD, DRINK AND ENTERTAINMENT
We’ll be honest and say we only tried Atardi (twice) and Waves (beach bar and grill, multiple times for lunch) while at the Marriott. Both were excellent, particularly if you love fish. For Waves, we highly recommend the fish tacos and the fish sandwich, both were incredible and filling. Prices were average for New York City, but if you’re from a more rural area, there may be a bit of sticker shock.
For dinner, Atardi was our favorite restaurant. We did not make it to Wacky Wahoo, Red Fish or some of the other hot spots of Aruba, but we cannot imagine them being that much better than Atardi to make the cab ride there and back worth it. We could easily be wrong, but there’s something that much more special about digging your feet into the bare sand right next to the warm water, while you eat fresh tuna, mahi mahi, salmon, shrimp, octopus etc, and sip a glass of wine. Prices matched typical New York City fine(r) dining, so the same rules probably apply for Waves on pricing.
We did not try La Vista, though heard it was just all right nor did we try Ruth Chris. We like steak a lot on occasion, but can easily head to a steakhouse in New York City to satisfy that itch. That said, if you’re not a big outdoors dinner person or dislike fish, Ruth Chris is a perfectly fine option.
Finally, we have to touch on the Starbucks on the property. It always had a line surprisingly, but be prepared to be ripped off. This was legitimately the most expensive Starbucks either of us has seen and we’ve bought Starbucks in Atlantic City, Las Vegas and New York City where a spinach feta wrap was $6-7 USD. That same wrap in Aruba was either $9 or $10 USD, not to mention $4-5 USD per coffee. There’s a Starbucks off property in the Palm Beach town which is much more reasonable if you absolutely need a Starbucks fix.
SUMMARY AND OVERALL SCORE
3.5/5 – We do not want to take away from the adult pool bar staff and the Atardi staff. They were genuinely excellent and made our five nights truly magical on the happy island of Aruba. For full disclosure, management reached out after the fact to address the issues we had and even provided compensation for it, which was much appreciated, but we want to keep this review honest.
We will make it back to Aruba, but we will not stay at the Aruba Marriott Resort again. Management simply does not seem to understand how to treat individual guests equally to corporate clients. Why should we return to a hotel, points or not, where we feel we will take a back seat to whichever corporate account Marriott is trying to keep happy at that point? It makes no sense.
In addition, the service level beyond the above mentioned pool and restaurant staff was average at best, and very few members of the staff seemed to be genuinely happy that they were working at the hotel. It was a very big difference compared to Hyatt Rose Hall where everyone went out of their way to make sure that our stay was awesome. That level of service was very absent at the Marriott and if this was a Courtyard Marriott in New Jersey, this would not be a big issue, but this was allegedly a 5 star quality hotel charging a cash rate of $550 plus a night. If we actually paid the cash rate, I would have been much more upset.
While the rude welcome and first day corporate shenanigans shook us the most, our experience did improve over the 5 nights. Even so, we will check out the Hilton, Hyatt Aruba or perhaps even a smaller chain the next time we visit Aruba.