Hotel Review: TownePlace Suites Winchester, Virginia

After spending a few days in Hampton Roads visiting family, we headed back up north to explore more of northern Virginia.

When looking into our accommodation options up there, I saw that there was a category 1 Marriott property – the TownePlace Suites Winchester. We’re sitting on a lot of Marriott Bonvoy points, so this was a great way to maximize them.

When booking award stays with Marriott, you get every 5th night free. There were quite a few things we wanted to see in that area, so we booked a 10 night stay – that way we could get both the 5th and 10th night free.

Another benefit of booking with points at this property is that we were able to book a 1 bedroom suite for the same number of points as a regular suite, even though the 1 bedroom suite cost more when paying cash.

Here’s a review of our stay at the TownePlace Suites Winchester, Virginia.

Check-In

We hadn’t left Chesapeake until almost 1:30pm, so after stopping for lunch along the way, we got to Winchester at about 6:15pm. I had checked in already using the app, so it didn’t take long to get our keys to room 204 once we arrived.

1 Queen Bedroom Suite

When entering the room, the kitchen was immediately on the left, the living room straight ahead, the bathroom around the corner to the right and the bedroom through a different door, also around to the right.

Kitchen

One of the reasons I enjoy staying at the TownePlace Suites brand is that every room has a fully equipped kitchen. This included a full-size fridge-freezer, microwave, stove top and dishwasher. Now that we’re living in hotels, it’s always nice having a room with a dishwasher so that we don’t have to manually wash them; this dishwasher though was probably the loudest I’ve ever heard and sounded like it was getting ready for takeoff.

The kitchen also had cookware, silverware, utensils and four place settings. It was nice that the pots and pans were all non-stick.

Living Room

The kitchen led through to the living room.

Along the left side there was a very large storage unit and desk, with an additional desk on rollers beneath.

The room didn’t seem to have a printed TV channel list, but that’s because you could bring up a channel guide using the remote. I love when hotels provide TVs with channel guides like this so that we don’t have to click through all the channels to discover what’s on.

On the opposite side of the living room was a sleeper sofa, ottoman and a side table that could be moved about. It would be nice if TownePlace Suites properties provided two of these as it’s only large enough for one person to use.

To the right of the sofa was an additional armchair with flat arms at the end so that drinks and other items could be rested on them.

Behind the armchair (and opposite the kitchen) was a closet with some smart storage options. In addition to a luggage rack, iron and ironing board, there was a pillow and blanket for the sleeper sofa.

The living room and bedroom had separate thermostats. The living room thermostat seemed a little off as it was hard to get the right temperature. When set to 72° it was generally OK, but at times it would feel a little too warm or too cool. Turning it down to 71° made the room freezing, while turning it up to 73° made the heating kick in, but this let off a pungent burning smell every time, so we quickly turned it back down to 72°.

Bedroom

Through a separate door off the living room was the bedroom. This contained a comfortable queen bed. The wall-mounted bedside lamps had a couple of power outlets and a USB port, making it easy to charge devices overnight.

Opposite the bed were some cupboards, TV and closet.

The bedroom closet didn’t contain anything other than some hangers and shelves.

Bathroom

The entrance to the bathroom was also off the living room. This was nice as it meant that I didn’t have to go through the bedroom to access the bathroom after Shae had gone to bed at night.

The water pressure wasn’t amazing, but it was certainly better than it had been at the Hampton Inn Chesapeake/Battlefield Blvd we’d stayed at before that.

As with many of Marriott’s brands, the toiletries were Paul Mitchell and were good quality.

Breakfast

Breakfast is complimentary for all guests when staying at the TownePlace Suites Winchester and was served until 9:30am during the week and 10am at weekends.

The options were largely the same each morning, although the hot options sometimes rotated. Most mornings they offered fried eggs with cracked black pepper, although they sometimes had scrambled eggs. There was also some kind of breakfast meat each morning, with pork sausage and turkey sausage patties on some days, with bacon and Canadian bacon provided other days.

The hotel had a good-sized breakfast area. There was a room just off where the food itself was served which is also where the 24/7 coffee and tea station was located.

On the other side of the lobby was an additional room that was used as a breakfast area in the morning and could be used for relaxing or working by guests the rest of the day.

Amenities

The TownePlace Suites brand is aimed more at guests who need somewhere to stay for an extended period of time which is one of the reasons why all the rooms have kitchens.

It also means they tend to have more amenities than you might get at other hotel brands. For example, there’s a guest laundry room; the washing machines cost $1.50 per load and the dryers cost $2 per load.

The hotel had an outdoor swimming pool. I wish I’d taken a photo during our first few days there as it was still open, but it was covered a few days after we arrived due to it only being open seasonally (we stayed mid-September).

The hotel had a fitness room with a few pieces of equipment and weights.

The air conditioning in the fitness room could be controlled by guests which was great. I think the thermostat might have been a little off though as even when set to 65° it didn’t feel as cool as that, but it certainly wasn’t an uncomfortable temperature.

In addition to the two breakfast rooms in the lobby area, there were a couple of other places where guests could hang out. There was a grill out front with some outdoor seating…

…along with a gazebo on the left side of the hotel with a picnic table beneath it.

The hotel is within walking distance of a grocery store and several restaurants, but if you don’t want to even walk that far, there’s a pantry area in the lobby where you can buy snacks, drinks, frozen meals, laundry detergent, etc.

Pet Policy

The TownePlace Suites Winchester is a pet-friendly property which is one of the reasons we chose it as we’re traveling with our dog Truffles. There’s a $50 pet fee per stay which is very reasonable. Most of Marriott’s brands charge $100+ per stay, so paying half that was great. Seeing as we stayed for 10 nights, that worked out to be $5 per night.

The hotel limits you to two pets per room. There are no size restrictions listed on their website, but it’s probably worth calling the hotel if you have a dog that’s 50 lbs or more just in case they do have size restrictions.

I don’t think you’re restricted to bringing only dogs either; while walking Truffles around one morning, I noticed a cat staring at me from the window sill of the room it was in.

The hotel has large grassy areas around the hotel, with a couple of places seemingly being designated pet walking areas as there were two poop bag stations.

Service

Overall, service was very good at the hotel with all members of the front desk and housekeeping staff being very friendly. Miguel in particular was very nice and helpful.

We declined housekeeping for pretty much our entire stay other than one or two days. The thing is, housekeeping came down our end of the second floor first thing in the morning. That meant that if we didn’t remove our ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign by something like 8:30am, we didn’t get housekeeping. One morning we headed out at 11am and stopped by the front desk on the way out to ensure housekeeping did our room. The front desk staff assured us that housekeeping would clean our room, but we returned to find it untouched. It wasn’t a huge issue, but seeing as that was one of the only times we wanted our room attended to, it was a little disappointing.

Something else that was disappointing was how the hotel deals with trash. I was initially pleased to see that the kitchen in our suite had separate cans for trash and recycling. We therefore made sure all recyclable materials were put in the appropriate receptacle. After leaving the cans outside our room one morning, Shae saw both the trash and recycling being tipped into the same garbage bag, so it doesn’t seem like the hotel recycles trash even if you separate it.

Check-In & Check-Out Times

Check-in at the TownePlace Suites Winchester is at 3pm, while check-out is at 12pm.

Wi-Fi

The hotel’s Wi-Fi had a good speed and didn’t seem to have any connection issues as such. When logging on at the start of our stay, we were able to specify our length of stay, so I assumed our laptops would remain connected to the internet for all 10 days without ever needing to reconnect. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, so we had to reconnect every 24 hours. As always seems to be the way, this often happened while I was in the middle of working on something online and meant I had to restart my laptop to get it to reconnect.

Location

The TownePlace Suites Winchester is in a pretty good location. It’s within walking distance of a Martin’s grocery store, along with several fast food restaurants like Sonic, Waffle House, Little Caesars Pizza and Bojangles. It’s just off I-81 and is only 5-10 minutes from downtown Winchester.

Parking

It’s free to park at the hotel. There are lots of spaces available both at the front and back of the property.

Cost

As I mentioned at the start of the review, we booked our stay using points. The TownePlace Suites Winchester is a category 1 property which means its standard cost is 7,500 points per night. Marriott recently introduced peak and off-peak pricing for award stays though. That means it now costs 5,000 (off-peak), 7,500 (standard) or 10,000 (peak) points per night.

Seeing as we got every 5th night free, both our 5th and 10th nights were free. That means our 10 night stay cost 60,000 points, or an average of 6,000 points per night.

One of the benefits of booking using points was that this particular property allows you to book their one bedroom suites for the same number of points as their regular suites even though the one bedroom suites are much more spacious and cost more. If we’d paid cash for the one bedroom suite, it would’ve cost us $176.97 per night. That means we got 2.95cpp (cents per point) of value by using our points, about four times the amount you could normally expect to get from Marriott Bonvoy points.

Final Thoughts

We had a very good stay at the TownePlace Suites Winchester, VA. It was nice being able to book a one bedroom suite at no additional expense. The suite was very comfortable (other than the temperature issues at times), the breakfast options were pretty good and the hotel had some good amenities.

I’d certainly recommend it if you’re looking for somewhere to stay in the Winchester area, especially if you have Marriott Bonvoy points you can redeem. As nice as it was having a one bedroom suite though, I certainly wouldn’t have paid more than $175 per night for it.

Truffles Approval Rating

Truffles gives the hotel four paws out of four – pawfect! With a pet fee of only $50, it left us with more money to get her treats and toys. She also liked us having a one bedroom suite as the bedroom was much quieter.

Our Rating

Room = 4.5 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 4.5 / 5
Food = 4.2 / 5
Location = 4.2 / 5
Service = 4.1 / 5
Overall Value = 4.7 / 5 (this is based on using points, the value isn’t quite as good if paying cash)

Total = 4.37 / 5

Address

TownePlace Suites, 170 Getty Ln, Winchester, VA 22602