Let me spoil this for you right away. The Marriott in Budapest is one of the nicest Marriotts I have ever stayed at. This is a fantastic property that made our stay in Budapest extra special.
The Budapest Marriott is situated on the Pest side of Budapest. Pest is on flat terrain while Buda is rather hilly; The Danube River separates the two. Anyone staying here does not need to worry about requesting a river view room. Every room in the hotel faces the Danube so you will have an excellent view, regardless of your room selection. When looking across the river, you can see many of Budapest’s famous bridges, including the Elizabeth Bridge and the Chain Bridge. The view is fantastic during the day, but it is absolutely stunning in the evening. Check the two pictures below. Both were taken from the Marriott, and if you would like to see the full size pic, these two are clickable.
Checking into the hotel was a pleasant experience. We were informed that we were upgraded to a junior suite, and there was nothing junior about the suite we were assigned. It was very large, complete with two separate rooms, two HDTVs, a coffee table, a king size bed, and a nice bathroom.
My apologies for not taking a picture of the secondary room in the suite. My parents were also staying at this hotel (with my father being a Marriott Rewards Lifetime Platinum member), and they got an even better suite than we did. They were a couple floors above us, and their suite had a proper name: The Janos Hill Suite.
While the layout of their suite was more or less identical to ours, there were two key differences. First, instead of a couch and coffee table in the second room, they had a full dining room table. And then in addition to that, they had the LARGEST hotel balcony I have ever seen. And on the topic of suites, while of course your mileage will vary, I think as a Marriott Platinum, you have a very good chance of getting a suite at this property. There are at least two hotel floors that are almost completely suites. I noticed that on our floor, almost all of the doors were spread out far enough that it seemed like nearly the entire floor was made up of Junior Suites. My parents were on a different floor, but their floor had similar characteristics, in addition to a few specially named suites.
When we arrived in Budapest, we had already been traveling in Europe for about ten days, which meant that we had piles and piles of dirty laundry. If you’re a guest at the Budapest Marriott, they’ll let you do your laundry at the Marriott Execustay Apartments, just a couple blocks away. This was a huge perk. There’s actually a security guard / receptionist in the lobby of the apartments so you don’t need to worry about your laundry being stolen.
I typically just choose points as my Platinum amenity of choice, but when I’m on vacation in international locations, I’ll often get the food just to see what I get. I was not disappointed with the Budapest Marriott’s offering! We chose the salami platter with champagne, and the preparation and delivery were quite fantastic.
We were feeling pretty good at this point. We knew that the location was second to none, we got upgraded to a nice suite, and the amenity was fantastic.
What else could make the Marriott an even better place? The lounge, of course!
The Marriott Budapest’s lounge did not disappoint. in fact, it was one of the nicest Marriott lounges I have ever been to. I won’t see it was THE best. There are some great lounges in Asia like the one at the Renaissance Zhongshan Park. However, it was quite large, and in addition to the large indoor square footage, there was a huge balcony outside as well. This balcony gave the same amazing views as pictured above. It was always a treat to sit outside and eat breakfast in the morning or have cocktails in the evening. The breakfast spread in the morning was pretty extensive, and the lounge always had waters and sodas that we could grab and take back to our room. In the evening, appetizers and free beer and wine were put out for all to enjoy. I suppose if you were trying to save money, you could have used the lounge appetizers as a dinner replacement, but why do that when there is so much amazing Hungarian food nearby!? In the evening, desserts were put out, and they were always prepared quite nicely. There were little pastries with the Marriott logo on them. There were some Hungarian marzipan treats.
The rooms were great, the lounge was great, the view was great, and they let us do our laundry for free. The concierge was also extremely helpful, and they assisted with our booking some tours. Budapest is my favorite city in Europe (okay fine maybe i’m biased because my mother was born there), and staying at the Marriott really helped us enjoy our time in Hungary.
