Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Review

The Baltimore Marriott Waterfront had been part of my thinking about the All Blacks-Springboks weekend long before I actually stayed there.

When I first compared Baltimore hotels for the match, I wasn’t looking for the best hotel in the city. I was trying to solve the post-match problem. With tens of thousands of spectators leaving M&T Bank Stadium together, being able to walk back to the hotel mattered more to me than having the better property. That eventually put us at the Holiday Inn Express Baltimore at the Stadiums for match night.

The Marriott Waterfront was a different proposition. It sits over at Harbor East, well away from the stadium cluster. For a normal Baltimore stay, I preferred its location and the hotel itself. For the night of the match, I didn’t want to rely on getting there afterward.

So we did both. We stayed near the stadium on Saturday night, then moved to the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront on Sunday.

The Baltimore weekend had gradually become a way of using several travel benefits that were already sitting in our accounts. This stay used a 35,000-point Marriott free-night certificate, topped up with another 2000 points.

I had also requested a Nightly Upgrade Award before arrival for a high-floor king room with a harbor view. The request wasn’t accepted. That sounded more consequential before we arrived than it turned out to be.

We reached the hotel just after noon and were given a room immediately. The front desk also asked whether we’d need my Marriott Platinum 4pm late checkout the following day. We had a train leaving before noon, so we didn’t.

More importantly, the room we received was a high-floor king overlooking the harbor. In other words, despite the rejected Nightly Upgrade Award, the practical outcome was essentially what I’d requested in the first place.

The room was a good size, with a king bed, desk and sofa. The bed was comfortable, with a particularly good duvet.

There was also a small coffee station and refrigerator near the entrance. The in-room coffee was perfectly adequate, which became relevant the next morning when the lounge coffee wasn’t much of an improvement.

The view was easily the best feature of the room. From high up in the hotel we looked directly across the Inner Harbor, with the National Aquarium and downtown Baltimore beyond it. The windows wrapped sufficiently around the room to give us different angles across the water, and the outlook changed as the sun went down.

So although the Nightly Upgrade Award hadn’t cleared, for this stay at least it made no difference to the room we actually received.

Waiting in the room was a welcome note specifically acknowledging that we’d redeemed points for the stay, together with two bottles of water and a small box containing two chocolates.

It wasn’t an elaborate amenity, but the wording caught my attention. Award stays can sometimes feel almost invisible once you’re at the hotel. Here, the property had explicitly recognized both elite status and the redemption.

Marriott Platinum status also gave us access to the hotel’s Concierge Lounge. The lounge occupies a large, bright space high in the hotel, with extensive windows and much the same harbor outlook we’d been enjoying from our room. There were plenty of tables and several separate seating areas.

The posted schedule had breakfast from 6:30am to 9:30am Monday through Friday. From Sunday through Thursday there was a light reception from 5:30pm to 7:30pm, followed by dessert until 10pm. The sign also explicitly listed lounge access for Platinum, Titanium and Ambassador Elite members plus one guest.

We went in shortly after the evening service began at 5:30pm. The savory selection wasn’t particularly ambitious, with snacks including guacamole and salsa. The accompanying corn chips were a little stale.

Nonalcoholic drinks were complimentary. Beer and wine weren’t: staff could provide a menu and charge alcoholic drinks to the room. Later in the evening the savory food was replaced by desserts. We tried the mini cheesecakes and apple tarts; there was also what I believe was a pumpkin tart.

There was enough there for an evening snack, and the harbor view made it a pleasant place to sit.

We returned the following morning for breakfast, with hot and cold items available in the lounge.

The breakfast was perfectly serviceable. The coffee wasn’t a significant improvement over what we’d already made in the room, but having breakfast included through Platinum status made for an easy start before heading to the station.

Earlier in the year I’d converted part of an American Express Marriott credit into a physical Marriott gift card during a hotel stay. After using most of it at the time, $26.76 remained.

I finally used that balance at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront. It wasn’t a large amount, but there was no reason to leave it stranded once we were staying at another Marriott anyway. The $26.76 was applied against our hotel charges and the gift card was finally finished.

The most unexpected part of the stay happened downstairs. When we’d originally compared hotels for the rugby weekend, I’d specifically rejected the Marriott Waterfront for match night because of its distance from M&T Bank Stadium. Our objective was to walk back after the game rather than deal with post-match transport.

On Sunday, we saw several members of the All Blacks traveling squad in the Marriott lobby. Outside, two motor coaches were waiting, with the All Blacks silver fern visible on the coach nearest the hotel. It became apparent that the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront had been the team’s hotel for the match the previous evening.

There isn’t really a contradiction there. The Marriott Waterfront hadn’t been the right match-night hotel for us because we wanted to walk back from the stadium. The All Blacks had dedicated transport waiting outside their hotel. They were solving an entirely different problem.

It was nevertheless a satisfying postscript to the original hotel search. We had considered the Marriott Waterfront, rejected it for match-night logistics, stayed there the following night anyway, and then discovered that one of the two teams we’d traveled to Baltimore to watch had made the opposite choice.

The Baltimore Marriott Waterfront worked very well as our second Baltimore hotel. The rejected Nightly Upgrade Award ultimately made no difference: we received the high-floor harbor-view king I’d requested anyway, and the Concierge Lounge was a useful Platinum benefit.

It still wouldn’t have been my choice for the night of the rugby match given our priority of walking back from M&T Bank Stadium. For the following night, that constraint disappeared. Once it did, the Marriott Waterfront was the better place for us to be.

Where to Stay for Springboks vs All Blacks: Hotels Near M&T Bank Stadium

How I Built My Baltimore Rugby Weekend

Holiday Inn Express Baltimore at the Stadiums Review

Turning a $100 Splurge Credit into Immediate Marriott Reimbursement