[gwenrenee007]

Originally Posted by KJones5

Personally, I liked the Grand Tikal the best. I thought it had the best of both the hotels!

Couldn't agree more! LOVE the tikal. The attached mall was great and the staff were great too! The rooms are HUGE!

[Clare'sMom]

Marriott Family Here..... Don't care for the Westin, and have stayed at the Grand Tikal (much nicer/bigger rooms) but we still like the Marriott. Great Staff, Food, media center and Pool. Very close to airport and embassy (and McDonalds) also has the airline desk right there.....

Leaving for the Marriott on Thursday to see my girls!!!

[beachdreams]

Marriott girl here. I have stayed at both and I found the food better and the staff much friendlier than the Westin. I do like Westin hotels but in Guatemala, I prefer the Marriott. Either one would be fine though.

[robandjulie]

Just to confuse things since others already have... the Grand Tikal is so nice. The staff are friendly and helpful and the attached malls have several fast food places (Pollo compero, mcd's, quiznos, pizza, taco bell...) and the hotel restaurant has a modest but sufficent buffet. It's not enough that you'll be overwhelmed, but they have a great spread of fruits, cereals, pastries and fresh juices as well as an omelet bar and then a table of hot trays with bacon and sausage and fried bananas and ususally some "american" foods (waffles or pancakes, basic scrambled eggs) as well as some more interesting stuff (tomales, chiliquiles, etc). And if you book through velocity tours they get breakfast for 2 adults added to the room and it's still under $100/night. Lovely pool, nice huge beds, great views of the volcanos, and about a 15 minute cab ride to the westin (which costs between $10-$15 depending on time of day) so whatever it would take to get from the westin/marriot to the embassy you'd just need to tack on 20 minutes and a few $$.

No hotel will be perfect. When we got to the GT this last visit they put us in a very nice room but the carpets had just been shampooed in there earlier that day. Nice that htey did it..but they were still SOAKING wet. Everytime I walked from the carpet to the tile floors in the entry area of our room I almost fell down and I couldn't imagine releasing our 19 mo old onto those wet floors/tile situation. So we had to ask for a different room which they did immediately and with great service. The room we had this time had the bathroom sink outside of the bathroom itself which at first we thought was great, but then we remembered that busy hands LOVE sinks with all the stuff sitting around them so we had extra security duty keeping him from pulling down the drying bottles and such. Our room in Feb and our first room this last trip were more typial "sinks in the bathroom". Oh well.

The last trip we stayed at the GT but visited friends at the Westin. It's very pretty and the staff seemed nice (they brought up room service and took it back out while we were there). Our friends had a suite which was clean and comfortable, but I can't vouch for the beds. Also, the westin vs GT: the GT does NOT have a baby room of any kind. But from what I saw at the westin, their baby room was mostly bouncy seats and other things geared for the 2-6 month old range so that wouldn't have been much use to us anyhow. The fridge may have been nice or the big kitchen sink & microwave, but he ate table food at the buffet and such and we made his bottles from hot tap water, so, again, we got by fine without it.