Element by Marriott Nashville Vanderbilt West End

Location

Fine

Great place to stay with good breakfasts.

Friendly staff.

The service from the staff and the cleanliness of the property.

Fantastic hotel near Vanderbilt and Tennessee State University. Valet was quick most days. Decent breakfast. The front desk staff is excellent. Rooms are huge as are the bathrooms. Feels mostly updated with some minor wear and tear. Safe area with not much in walking distance. But they have this beautiful green space adjacent to the hotel

Close to my work.

Great service from the doormen that valet and bring your luggage to your room.

Outward appearance is nice. Valet was helpful getting luggage to room. Room was clean. Kitchenette was well appointed.

The valet and Sam Cantrell were awesome. The minute I pulled in I was welcomed, bags out of the car and ushered into the hotel and up to my room without even having to think. They were both very patient with me as I was a bit frazzled after my eight hour journey. It was amazing. Hotel is beautiful. Looking forward to my stay.

Max was the best valet, so cute, would love his number!! He took such great care of me and my car 10/10

Close to TSU

Don’t go if you’re in a hurry to obtain your room. Check in time at 3 pm is a joke. Still sitting here with about 20 other people waiting for our rooms. It’s almost 4 pm now! No estimated time on our room, just go sit down and wait for us to call you over. Not sure what’s going on, but this is a bad look for a first timer at your hotel.

Hotel room was very spacious! Bed was comfortable. Staff was very nice and accommodating. Hotel is a close drive to Vanderbilt Hospital.

My mom, my sister, and I came to Nashville to celebrate my mom's 70th birthday and stayed at The Element Nashville Vanderbilt West End and while there are a lot of pros to this hotel, especially for the price, the two cons we experienced were so major they overshadowed our entire experience of this hotel.

I think it's important to note that I worked as a front desk agent at a hotel in a major city for almost a decade. I know how challenging that job is and frankly, how much it can suck. I tend to not read too much into a front desk agent's demeanor or take anything personally if it seems like someone on the hotel staff is having a bad day. Hospitality is a really tough industry and I imagine it's only gotten worse post-Covid. With that being said, we experienced some odd behavior by some of the staff, enough so that I felt it was important to write a review because I think it speaks to a much bigger issue with the way this hotel is run and is the reason why we won't ever come back and I would urge others to find other accommodations.

I booked one room for the three of us because the hotel advertises that their standard room with a king size bed also has a sofa bed and sleeps 4 people. Seemed perfect. Upon arrival, I decided to take the sofa bed. Big mistake. The sofa bed is not a bed. It is a VERY VERY worn out mattress that is so thin and old that you can feel every single spring and the support bar from the bed frame running down the middle. After the first night on the sofa bed, I asked for more pillows, thinking maybe I could pad the mattress a little extra and make it more comfortable. That didn't work. So after two nights of little to no sleep, I went down to the front desk to ask for a room move to a room with two queen beds. I was very apologetic, even explaining that I worked in hospitality and didn't want to be a pain. When I explained the situation with the sofa bed and that I hadn't slept in two nights and asked to move to a room with two beds, the front desk agent, Jatoya, showed no concern or care and said that we wouldn't be able to move that day because housekeeping had already gone home so they wouldn't be able to clean the room we were currently in and re-sell before the end of the day. Jatoya then looked and said they were sold out of queen rooms the following day so we wouldn't be able to move then either. There was no apology offered or any sign of care for the situation and I left holding back tears (partly because I was absolutely exhausted but also because I would have appreciated some small sign of understanding or care for the situation). When I got back up to the room, my mom made an executive decision and purchased a second room so that all three of us would have a real bed to sleep in for the final two nights of our stay. That was really our only option at that point.

The biggest issue is that this hotel should absolutely not advertise these sofa beds as sleeping options. They aren't. Period. The second issue was the way this was all handled by the front desk. Being told we can't move because they can't resell our room is frankly, insane. I can understand not being able to move if rooms aren't available, but the whole "we can't resell your room" angle, absolutely terrible. If that's how these front desk agents are being trained, to prioritize hotel profit over the guest's comfort/experience, then yeah, I'm definitely never coming back to this or any Marriott Bonvoy hotel property ever again.

The bummer is, this hotel has some awesome amenities and could've been great. Had it not been for the uncomfortable interactions with some of the staff and the sofa bed issue, I'd be giving it a wonderful review. The breakfast every morning was great. The free shuttle service was a lifesaver and the shuttle drivers, Tim and Byron, were SO awesome! Also, the room had a filtered water faucet attached to the sink, which I thought was very, very cool. The rooms were clean, getting extra blankets and pillows was easy. The location had some cool stuff around it and was close to pretty much all the touristy stuff we wanted to do. There was so much to love about this hotel, but that didn't outweigh the stuff we hated about it. This all to say, we won't be back to this or any other Marriott Bonvoy property and I would encourage whoever is reading this to look elsewhere because though the price of these rooms is tempting, it ends up costing you the same when you have to book two rooms instead of one because you find out the hard way that the rooms at The Element Vanderbilt West End don't actually sleep up to 4 people.