Annie and I traveled to Orange County in January to visit our friends, Melissa and Scott. For the first three nights of our trip, we stayed at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel & Spa. We found it to be a perfect home base to lots of area attractions like downtown Newport Beach, Balboa Island and Laguna Beach.

Newport Beach Marriott Resort & Spa — The Newport Beach Marriott Hotel & Spa

The hotel was originally built in 1975. In 2014, all of its 512 guest rooms and 20 suites went through a comprehensive refresh. It consists of two towers—the 16-story North Tower and the 10-story South Tower—and two wings.

In This Post

Location
Hotel Room
Miscellaneous
Bottom Line

Location

Located across the street from Fashion Island, a high-end shopping center, this hilltop hotel overlooks a private golf course, Newport harbor and the ocean.

Nearby, it’s less than 10 minutes to Balboa Island and downtown Newport Beach. Corona del Mar is a 10 to 15 minute drive and Laguna Beach is no more than a 25 minutes. Here’s a map of the Marriott’s location.

The Room

Our room was located on the 3rd floor of one of the low-rise wings. To get to our wing we exited the main tower and walked down a covered path to the wing. The wing hallways are all open air, so you get natural light and can feel the coastal breeze. It’s a wonderful feeling when it’s January and as soon as you walk out of your hotel room, you can feel that warm breeze. That’s how you know you’re on vacation!

King room at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel & Spa

The room was clean and quiet, but there was no real “wow” factor. We did get upgraded to a room with a balcony, but the balconies are pretty small. We used it to gauge the temperature before venturing out each day.

The view from our balcony overlooking the rose garden.

A nice feature within the room is that the TV had Netflix. After signing in to my own account, we were able to watch a few shows while we were getting ready for dinner or to fall asleep to at night.

Another pleasant surprise was the comfort of the bed. In many hotels, I find it hard to get a good night sleep. Either the pillows are too soft or too hard or the bed is so uncomfortable that I wake up in the morning with a stiff back. But at this hotel, I slept very well and woke up with no back pain at all.

The bathroom was clean and modern, but a little small. Two people definitely couldn’t be in the bathroom at the same time.

Miscellaneous

Our focus on this trip was being with our friends and exploring the surrounding area. Thus we didn’t utilize many of the hotel amenities.

However they do have a steak and seafood restaurant called Hook & Spear and a Starbucks® located right off the lobby.

They have a fitness center, spa and two outdoor pools. It wasn’t quite pool weather when we were there, but the pool area looked nice with a resort-like feel.

The outdoor space is also home to a huge rose garden which is a beautiful space for wedding ceremonies and receptions.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is that this hotel is in a great central location to the beach, great restaurants and within a short drive to cute beach towns.

One thing to note, however, is that this hotel charges both a resort fee ($30) and a parking fee ($29 for self-park) per night. This is becoming pretty standard across the industry, so it’s certainly not unique to this hotel. That being said, if you forget to add these charges into the cost of your stay, you might be surprised when you see the final bill.