Cassandra Henry

Review of JW Marriott Hotel and Resort &...

***BEWARE: WE HAD BED BUGS DURING OUR STAY***

***BEWARE: WE HAD BED BUGS DURING OUR STAY***
Regarding our stay at the JW Marriott Guanacaste Resort & Spa, I would like to first state that the staff at the resort were very friendly and courteous. We have stayed at many different hotels across the world at varying levels, and I must say that overall, I was very impressed by the level of staff. However, there was an incident at your resort that left my with a very sour taste in my mouth, and I do feel that management completely mismanaged the situation, and I cannot ever recommend anyone stay at this resort without knowing this piece of information:
During our stay, I was attacked by bed bugs on two separate evenings. On our fourth or fifth night of our seven-night stay, I woke up with 20+ bites on my left leg. This felt odd to me because I recall that day, I had not left the hotel room except to eat breakfast and eat dinner, so I did not go outside to the beach/pool or go walk through a rain forest or brush up against any grass. In fact, I had been so tired that day that all I did was sleep in our room the entire day. Originally, we thought a mosquito or spider had come under the covers. That night before going to bed, we checked the sheets for any bugs, and we found none. The next morning, I awoke with 20+ more bites, this time all on my right leg. That morning we had to wake up early for a tour, so we did not have much time to figure out what happened but we suspected bed bugs. When we got back to our room at 7:30 pm, we undid the sheets to look at the mattress, and to our shock, we found pellet-like droppings and blood stains that are consistent with bed bugs (we have pictures). When we called the manager / housekeeping, they made us wait for over 20 minutes before arriving. Before we could even recount the story, they were already defensive and said that this was "just dirt" and was not a problem and said that I must have "fleas". It was also strange that they said that they already had room made up for us before even looking at the situation or discussing the issue, which made me think that they had already known about this. I was very upset as at the moment I had over 40+ bites on my leg, and they were denying the validity the issue. At this point, the night manager had to call the front desk manager. Thankfully, the front desk manager understood the severity of the situation, and since I was very worried that we were going to take back bed bugs to New York, he said they could clean all our clothes, shoes, and luggage in the next day. At this point, it was already 10 pm, and I was too tired to argue any further and wanted to go to bed in our new room. The next day, management never acknowledged the situation - remember I had OVER 40 BITES on my leg. We asked that we not pay for the two nights that I got bitten, which I think was very reasonable since we paid thousands of dollars already at the resort for food, drinks, and spa services (as well as the five other nights we were there). However, they did not feel that this was reasonable, which is why I will post this account to all the reviews with pictures to show that this hotel did in fact have bed bugs.