Hotel Review: Residence Inn Hartford Windsor, Connecticut

The third and final hotel we stayed at during our 3.5 weeks in Connecticut was the Residence Inn Hartford Windsor.

We stayed there 10 nights using points as every 5th night is free when booking award stays using Marriott Bonvoy points. We had a great stay overall and loved the suite that we were upgraded to. Some of the service at the hotel wasn’t great, but I’d still recommend staying at this property.

Here’s my full review of the Residence Inn Hartford Windsor.

Check-In

The check-in process began the night before we arrived at the hotel. We’d booked a ‘Studio 1 King’, but I’d seen online that they had a 2 bedroom bi-level loft available for the duration of our stay. I have Platinum status with Marriott, so I initiated a chat with the property in the Marriott app to ask about an upgrade.

I’d started the chat just after midnight and so didn’t get a reply until the following morning. They advised they didn’t have any 2 bedroom suites available for the length of our stay (even though they were bookable on the Marriott website), but she did confirm an upgrade to a penthouse suite.

Sure enough, checking my reservation straight after the chat showed that we’d been upgraded. It wasn’t described as a penthouse suite though, but rather a bi-level loft with a loft bedroom, a Murphy bed, a sofa bed and two bathrooms. We didn’t actually need a two bedroom suite – I was just wanting something more spacious with a separate bedroom – so the description of this room sounded like it’d suit our needs.

We arrived at the hotel at about 4:15pm; there was no line at the front desk, so we got checked in straight away. The person checking us in was very friendly and it was only a couple of minutes before we had our keys to room 822.

Hotel Layout

The hotel has maps of the property’s layout at the front desk which was very helpful. Rather than it just being one building, the hotel was set out like an apartment complex with 12 different buildings, each of which had 8 rooms in them.

In addition to those, there was the Gate House which is where the front desk, breakfast area, fitness room and some other amenities were located.

There was a path that ran around nearly the entire perimeter of the hotel, as well as a path running through the middle with offshoots between each building. That made it easy to cut through to other locations on site rather than having to take the long way round if you’re on the opposite end.

Each building helpfully has a large number on the side, making it easier to identify which one you need. Seeing as our room number was 822, we needed building 8.

Bi-Level Loft

Our room was at the top of the stairs in the above picture. That was slightly inconvenient as it meant we had to haul all our stuff up the stairs rather than being able to use a luggage cart; we travel full-time and so have to unload a lot more than the average hotel guest.

When entering the room, we were pleased to see how spacious it was. I don’t know what the square footage was, but I’d guess it was 800-1,000 sq ft.

Living Areas

On the left was the living room. This had a sofa bed, coffee table, ottoman, TV, side table and fireplace. The fireplace can be used by guests, but you have to purchase Duraflame logs from the front desk as natural wood can’t be used.

On the other side of the living room was an armchair and another side table. Beyond that was a dining table with four chairs and a desk with an office chair.

Behind the armchair was a queen Murphy bed. This was a great feature and we took advantage of it a few times to take a nap. It also means that you can comfortably fit 6 people in this suite seeing as there’s also the sofa bed.

Back by the front door there was a closet which contained a blanket, iron and ironing board.

Then down the hall to the right of the office desk was a larger closet which had a couple of pillows for the Murphy bed.

Downstairs Bathroom

To the left of that closet was the downstairs bathroom. This had a sink and vanity…

…as well as a toilet and a bathtub with shower. The shower’s water pressure was pretty good.

The sink had a set of Paul Mitchell toiletries which consisted of a couple of bars of soap, shampoo and conditioner.

Kitchen

One of the reasons I like staying at Residence Inns is that each room has a kitchen that’s always well-appointed. Ours had a full-size fridge-freezer, dishwasher, sink, microwave and coffee maker. Even better, it had a range cooker with an oven rather than just a stove top.

Between the kitchen and living room was a breakfast bar with lots of cupboard space and a couple of tall chairs.

The cupboards and drawers had all the plates, dishes, cookware, utensils, etc. you’d need during a stay.

One small downside of the kitchen is that we found rodent poop beneath the sink one morning, although we thankfully didn’t ever spot one.

Between the living room and kitchen was the stairway that led up to the bedroom loft and upstairs bathroom. One of our only complaints about the room is that the loft wasn’t enclosed. That meant if I wanted any kind of light on downstairs at night to work after Shae had gone to bed, it meant it was even brighter upstairs (more about that shortly).

Bedroom

The loft bedroom had a queen bed that was nice and comfortable, along with a couple of bedside tables and lamps.

On the opposite side of the room was a wall-mounted TV and a third closet – this closet didn’t contain anything other than hangers.

Upstairs Bathroom

Off to the right of the closet was a sink and vanity with several drawers and the same set of Paul Mitchell toiletries that were in the downstairs bathroom.

To the right of that was the bathroom containing the toilet and another bathtub with shower. The water pressure of this shower wasn’t as good; I’m not sure if that’s because it had a different type of shower head or if there was another reason.

Overall, we loved our room – I could quite happily live in an apartment like this, although I’d prefer to have an enclosed bedroom rather than the loft style that we had here.

There was one major downside to the room though and it’s something we couldn’t do much about.

Stairway Light

In the stairway leading upstairs, there was a light installed in the wall, but didn’t think anything of it when we first arrived.

That changed when it was bedtime though. I searched high and low around the suite for a switch to turn the light off. I had no success, so I called the front desk to ask where the light switch would be.

He had no idea, so I checked with a different staff member the following day. She advised that the light is a safety feature due to the stairs and so there’s no way for guests to turn it off.

On the one hand it’s good that they’re so focused on safety. On the other hand, it’s a huuuuuuge pain in the ass. They’ve installed a light bulb with such high wattage that it lights up the bedroom at night. To try to counteract its effect, we taped a towel over it, but it didn’t do much good. The photo below shows how much light was still emitted, although it doesn’t do justice to quite how bright the light actually appears when you’re trying to sleep.

In the end, we went to the dollar store and bought a dark placemat and taped it to the wall. That helped, but a fair amount of light still made its way through.

Given that they require this light in the stairway, I wish they’d install light bulbs with much lower wattage or have some other kind of dim nightlight rather than this full-on light. It means there’s no point in them installing blackout curtains as the bedroom’s always lit up at night.

Breakfast

Breakfast is included with your stay when staying at the Residence Inn Hartford Windsor. It’s served from 6am to 9am on weekdays and 7am to 10am at the weekend.

The hotel offers a fairly good breakfast spread in theory, but it reality it wasn’t great. That’s because the breakfast staff did an awful job with keeping breakfast items stocked. Nearly every morning of our stay there were multiple breakfast items that were empty and which they didn’t bother restocking. On different days there was no fruit, no eggs, no breakfast meat, no yogurts, no pastries, no cheese, etc. Most days at least four items were empty; I got lucky on the day I took these photos as only the pastries and yogurts were completely empty.

Considering how little effort was placed into restocking breakfast items, the breakfast staff sure did hustle when it came to clearing everything away. In fact, they’d often start clearing items away before 9am which is when breakfast was supposed to end during the week. If you like a late breakfast, be sure to arrive at least 5-10 minutes before breakfast is due to end, otherwise you might find the breakfast area even more empty than normal.

There’s also a coffee and tea station in the breakfast area which is available 24/7.

Evening Social

Residence Inn properties offer an evening social from Monday to Wednesday called The Mix. This usually consists of enough food to be used as an evening meal, as well as sodas, wine and beer.

Our 10 nights at the Residence Inn Hartford Windsor included five evenings where we could’ve eaten at The Mix, but we only ended up eating there a couple of those nights as we had other dinner plans the other few nights.

One Tuesday evening they offered a choice between teriyaki chicken patties and grilled eggplant, with sesame seed buns, salad and chips. For drinks there were a few different types of soda, red wine, white wine, Stella Artois and Bud Light.

The following week I went for dinner at The Mix but, similar to how breakfast ran, all of the food was completely empty. Assuming that more food would be out shortly, I waited at one of the tables. And waited. And waited. After about 10 minutes, no food had been brought out, so I went over to the kitchen to see if I could find any staff and it turned out they were all standing around chatting rather than working.

I asked if they had any more food (we were only 45 minutes through The Mix’s 90 minute time period) and they brought out some more food a couple of minutes later. After that, they seemed to do a better job of keeping the food stocked.

The food itself that night was very tasty. It was curry chicken served in a few different ways – one over rice and beans, another in some kind of pastry and a third kind that I didn’t get a photo of. They were served on very small plates and each one was only a couple of mouthfuls, so I ended up having a couple of each.

Amenities

Residence Inn is a brand aimed at customers looking for an extended stay. As a result, they have more amenities than you might get at other types of hotels.

For example, there’s a sports court outside where you can play tennis or basketball, with a grill and picnic table next to it.

The hotel has an outdoor pool that was extremely popular with guests during our stay, especially seeing as we were there during July 4th.

At the back of the Gate House was the guest laundry area. The washing machines cost $1.50 per load and the dryers were $1.25 per load.

In the main part of the Gate House was a business center with one computer and a printer.

Next to the front desk was a pantry area in case you wanted something to eat or drink and didn’t want to go to a restaurant or the grocery store.

The fitness room was upstairs in the Gate House. This had several pieces of equipment and weights.

The fitness room was uncomfortably hot. We asked the front desk staff to turn the temperature down and they ended up reducing it to 64°, but it stayed at 76° (although it felt even hotter than that). After working out on our final day there, I noticed that an air vent in the ceiling was closed, so I opened it up and immediately felt some cooler air coming through. I just wish I’d noticed that 10 days earlier!

Pet Policy

The Residence Inn Hartford Windsor is a pet-friendly property. They don’t have any published restrictions on the weight of your dog, while the pet fee is $100 per stay, regardless of how long you stay. That’s not great if you’re only wanting to stay one night, but we were there 10 nights and so it was an average of $10 per night for us to have Truffles with us which isn’t bad.

There’s grass all around the hotel, so there’s plenty of space for your dog to do their stuff. There is a dedicated dog walking area at the back of the hotel though.

There are at least two dog parks within about 15 minutes of the hotel. The closer one that we went to was Windsor Dog Park. That one wasn’t great though – the small dog side had overgrown grass, so we used the large dog side. While it was an OK size for Truffles given she’s only 10lbs, it seemed on the small size if there were lots of larger dogs in there.

A couple of other times we went to East Windsor Dog Park which was much nicer. The grass was mown, both the small and large dog sides were larger and there was more shade.

Service

Service at the Residence Inn Hartford Windsor was a mixed bag. The staff members at the front desk were all very friendly and helpful, so definitely no complaints there.

The rest of the staff seemed to put very little effort into their jobs though. Apologies in advance if this seems like I’m complaining a lot, but here’s a list of some of the poor service:

• Breakfast – As mentioned earlier, there were usually at least four types of breakfast items that were empty because the breakfast staff didn’t bother refilling them. They also started clearing breakfast away before it was due to end.
• Evening Social – We only ate at The Mix twice, but one of those nights the staff didn’t bother refilling the food until I asked.
• Housekeeping – We declined housekeeping nearly every day in order to earn bonus points (more on that shortly). We therefore only got housekeeping one day but they did a terrible job:
  • They left both bathroom trash cans on the bathroom sinks and didn’t add new liners inside them.
  • They dumped all the fresh towels in a pile on the living room armchair rather than putting them in the bathrooms.
  • There were no toiletries or toilet paper left in either bathroom, even though both bathrooms were empty of those.
  • The Murphy bed wasn’t made.
  • No dishwasher powder or dishwashing liquid was left.
• Fitness room – The fitness room was sometimes out of towels; given how hot it was up there, they were definitely needed.
• Swimming pool – Staff didn’t do a great job replenishing the towel supply at the pool either. Over the course of several hours by the pool, no towels were brought out even though the pool area was packed.
• Cleaning – We found all kinds of items on the carpet of the living room when we arrived, so whoever cleaned the room beforehand hadn’t done a great job vacuuming. There were also several items of trash outside our building’s stairwell that it took several days for housekeeping to clear away.
• Moving out – The morning we checked out, one of the housekeeping staff members was cleaning the downstairs room. He’d placed his cart in front of the path blocking our way up the stairs. At one point, he was standing by the cart while we were bringing our items out and just watched us having to walk over the grass in order to get to our car rather than moving the cart so that it wasn’t blocking the way.

One or two of these things I’d ignore, but having all of them happen during our stay left a bad impression of the non-front desk staff members.

Check-In & Check-Out Times

Check-in is at 3pm, while check-out is at 12pm.

Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi was great at the hotel for a couple of reasons. The connection was solid and always fast, so that was good. I also appreciated that when logging on at the start of our stay, we were able to specify that we’d be there 10 days which ensured we didn’t have to log back in each day.

Location

This hotel is just off I-91, so it’s in a convenient location for getting on and off the highway. It only takes about 10-15 minutes to get into downtown Hartford, while there are several restaurants and grocery stores within a few minutes drive.

Parking

Due to this particular property’s design, the parking lot wraps around the entire property which means that you can park right outside whichever of the 12 buildings you’re staying in. Building 8 which we were staying in is at the back of the property, so it was nice that we didn’t have to park at the front and walk around each day.

Cost

As mentioned at the start of the review, we booked our stay using points. At the time of our stay, the Residence Inn Hartford Windsor in Connecticut was a category 2 property in the Marriott Bonvoy program which meant it cost 1,2500 points per night. Marriott offers every 5th night free on award stays, so we got both the 5th and 10th nights free, meaning our stay cost us a total of 100,000 points.

As a Platinum member, when checking in I had the choice between getting 500 bonus points or something free from their pantry area. I’m all about the points, so I chose those.

The hotel also offers 250 points per day when declining housekeeping. You’re supposed to let the front desk know the night before you want to decline housekeeping and place the hanger in the photo below on your door handle the next day.

Despite doing that for 8 out of our 10 days, our 2,000 bonus points were never awarded. I’ve therefore reached out to Marriott Bonvoy Assist on Twitter via Direct Message; doing that in the past for a similar issue resulted in the bonus points being awarded the following day.

If we’d paid cash for our stay, it would’ve cost $133.52 per night. That’s not a bad price considering how relatively expensive hotels in Connecticut are, as well as the fact that all the rooms have kitchens, breakfast (and potentially dinner three nights a week) is included and all the amenities the hotel has.

Using points was still a better option though as it meant we got 1.34cpp (cents per point) of value. That’s close to twice what you can normally expect to get using points, hence why we chose that option.

Final Thoughts

I know I went on a bit of a rant earlier about some of the poor service, but I really enjoyed our stay at the Residence Inn Hartford Windsor. Our upgraded room was spacious, it was great having a kitchen, breakfast (and dinner to an extent) was included and the hotel had some good amenities. Even though the hotel was busy during our stay – especially on July 4 – it wasn’t noisy in our room.

There were some downsides though. Like I mentioned, some of the service was poor and the light in the stairway leading to the bedroom loft that couldn’t be turned off was incredibly annoying and meant we didn’t sleep as well at night.

Overall though, it’s a decent choice if you need somewhere to stay near Connecticut’s state capital.

Truffles Approval Rating

Truffles gives this hotel four paws out of four – pawfect. While the pet fee is high for shorter stays, our 10 night stay meant it wasn’t so bad. There was lots of space to walk around the hotel and she liked that our room was so quiet at night.

Our Rating

Room = 4.7 / 5
Hotel Amenities = 4.8 / 5
Food = 4.0 / 5
Location = 4.3 / 5
Service = 3.6 / 5
Overall Value = 4.6 / 5

Total = 4.33 / 5

Address

Residence Inn, 100 Dunfey Ln, Windsor, CT 06095