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Dead Sea Experience: Jordan Valley Marriott Resort & Spa

June 30th, 2011

I’m going to write a weekly article about tourism in Jordan, starting it with my experience with the dead sea hotels for this week and the week after then hopefully followed with other plans and locations.

Starting with the Jordan Valley Marriott Resort & Spa, located in Sweimah, Jordan.

I’ve only spent 2 nights in hotels at the Dead Sea in Jordan, I live in Amman and usually visit the hotels every summer for swimming and spending some time away, but actually last year I managed to escape for 2 nights and stayed at another hotel, checking the rates this year I was able to book a room for 2 for 116 JD/night inclusive on a Friday, so I went for it.

When we first arrived, there was a huge car queue and the security officers were doing a really good job at checking every single car coming in, we managed to get in after a while, the hotel staff were friendly and we were also able to have an early check-in which was super cool. I expected to have a bad room because the rate was too low, but it was actually great.

The room was spacious, had a small balcony with 3 couches, and it was just great, too bad the view was the nearby still being built hotel/resort and that’s it. Also had a big LCD with a great selection of OSN and other paid TV stations. Everything was clean, A/C took 1 minute to cool the room. What I didn’t like, was that I was able to hear kids crying next door. The walls felt so transparent. It was okay.

After changing into swimming shorts, we went down to swim just to find the hotel’s residents pool too full with children and Muhajabat in the pool with their full clothes on (veiled women with their clothes on, not even Islamic swimming suits) and there were neither free beds, seats or towels to use. Moved to the second guests and residents pool to find it even worse, many people who are just visiting for the day, children everywhere! some woman took her 2 years olds’ kid diaper out and put him in swimming shorts then left the diaper on a side, was freaking disgusting. and also, no seats, beds or towels. So, we went to the 3rd pool, which is the relaxing pool (adults only), surprisingly it had few people in which was great, we asked for towels, there weren’t any but the staff were so friendly to get us some after we asked for, they kept apologizing for like an hour which showed how nice, welcoming and responsible they are.

After having a dip for around 3 hours, we decided to have food at the Italian restaurant, “Il Terrazo”. I can say that this restaurant has excellent food, seriously rewarding and worth every penny. We went back to the pools, to find that children are allowed in the adults only pool after 7:00pm which turned into a nightmare, however… we went out for dinner at a friend’s place in Amman then went to the hotel, slept and woke up at 9:00am for breakfast, to find the restaurant not only full, people were fighting for chairs, queue was outrageous, however talking to the philippina there with my very basic skills of Tagalog helped me get a table in no-time, food was great, people were pushing each other as if it was the last day on earth. We went to the relaxing pool for few, then checked out.

Overall experience: Great place if you’re a family and your children are annoying, If you don’t mind children the place is great but if you do, it could be a nightmare. rates 3/5 on my scale.

However, hotel management has a great twitter account, @MarriottDeadSea – they respond to people who check-in online using Foursquare and using twitter. I think it would be great during weekdays.