This is in regards to their Events Department -
I had my wedding reception here last year. I complained about the management and received little compensation for all that had gone wrong.
In the 6 months it took to begin planning my wedding reception to briefly following the reception I had 3 different events coordinators. The first two were amazing, but they left for good reason, the hotel events department was barely a-float.
There's literally a list of things that went wrong, but the two most concerning:
1) The hired serving staff (many from temp agencies) didn't do their jobs!
2) One of the hired staff were high/drunk, and when he and others were asked for help by my family were giving them sass and they still didn't help.
During the wedding, all I saw was how things were going wrong. So unfortunately, I didn't enjoy majority of my reception. When you spend all that time planning and spending $$$ and things are being executed half ass or not at all.. it's pretty distressful for an already stressed bride. I complained about this, but it wasn't until I got in touch with Marriott International that anyone called me back. They admitted they were going through many staff changes and apologized for the various incidents.
When you spend about $14,000 for SOLELY service and drinks (we catered food). I expect top notch service. My overall bill still had the 22% service gratuity (which they deserved NONE of - which I argued). In the end they reimbursed me $990 which was half the service gratuity. I hate to be ungrateful but that's ridiculous.
My only reason to write this review is because I wish I had known that their events services had gone downhill in past few years. I held an event there in 2010 and the events coordinator at the time, Diana??, and the service were great. People plannng events here should ask the following questions:
1) Are they still using temps and what experience/requirements do they have?
2) If things don't go right (which they have someone from the staff on floor during your events - so they can see it themselves), how can they offer compensation or fix the situation??
At the end - the temps were what were blamed for all the awful service (not clearing plates - my family cleared plates, serving drinks in CANS - when i made it a point everything should be served in glassware, etc...) So that's who I would ask the most questions about.
I hope that things change for the Marriott in the future. They used to be one of the best places to hold large scale events in Madison. In the end, I do wish them the best in getting back to where they once used to be.