Staying Healthy and Happy at the Charlotte Marriott City Center

Today I’ve got more details on our Saturday night staycation in Uptown Charlotte at the newly renovated Charlotte Marriott City Center. The hotel is wrapping up a multi-phase renovation project that overhauled the entire hotel. I wanted to share my experience and photos with you because a) the renovations are clean and modern and b) they are focusing on the idea of “staying well” which I think is a great direction for the future of travel. If every hotel I stayed in could have a stay and a gym like this hotel offers, it would be amazing.

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The Charlotte Marriott City Center is nestled right in the heart of Uptown Charlotte and is close walking distance to many restaurants, attractions, office buildings, Time Warner Cable Arena, the EpiCentre and more. It has 19 stories, 446 guest rooms, 20,000 square feet of event space and one amazing gym. Later this year they’ll be unveiling their new lobby/lounge/restaurant space on the ground level. The Charlotte Marriott City Center has tapped James Beard award winning chef RJ Cooper to head up the restaurant.

Let’s take a peak inside of the hotel.

The Standard Guest Rooms

We stayed in one of the City Center Suite rooms on the 16th floor. Upon entering the room, I was immediately impressed by the abundant natural light and clean, modern feel of the room. I was also thrilled to find hardwood floors. Hotel carpet can be off-putting, especially when stained or smelly. Everything about this room felt so clean.

There was a living/sitting area and separate bedroom area. The sitting area was very spacious and the couch was large and comfortable. It was a great place to hang out with a glass of wine and if I were traveling on business I’d love kicking my feet up and getting some work done in this space.

There was a single serve coffee maker with Starbucks coffee and a mini-fridge in the sitting area.

On the other side of the wall was the bedroom area. The room featured two large flatscreen TV’s and they are wired for online streaming and Netflix. We logged into our Netflix account that night and watched one of our favorite shows. I love this amenity.

The king sized bed was very comfortable and had a variety of pillow options. There was an alarm clock that could be synched to your iPhone via blue tooth next to the bed. I love playing background music in hotel rooms so I appreciated being able to stream our Spotify.

The bathroom was small but functional and nice.

There was a rain shower head in the shower and aromatherapy bath products that smelled amazing.

The Stay Well Rooms

We also checked out one of Marriott’s new Stay Well rooms while we were there. According to Marriott’s website, “Stay Well was created from the belief that as we travel for business and pleasure, we deserve environments that positively impact our health, happiness and well-being.”

This new concept is available at just 7 Marriott’s around the country right now but I sincerely hope it becomes the norm.

Here’s the in-room guide to staying well. Just read about some of the cool features of Stay Well rooms.

The Indoor Dining

When it came to in-room dining, Marriott is breaking out of the mold by offering reasonable prices and your choice of pick up or delivery. No food carts or trays and no crazy service fees. You can pick your food up packaged to-go like you would at a restaurant or you can have it brought to your room for $5 in the same to-go packaging.

The Fitness Center: FLEX by Marriott

Okay, the GYM! It’s amazing. It’s huge, clean and has tons of great equipment. Marriott recognizes that working out is an important part of many of their guests lives so they created a fitness space that lets you keep your workout routine while traveling. Check out this infographic on their Facebook page.

There is a whole wall of cardio equipment, weight machines, a couple cable systems, free weights, kettlebells, stretching areas and a fitness studio.

This cable set up from LifeFitness had so many great options from TRX to box jumps to resistance bands and more.

Here’s the stretching and mobility room, including foam rollers!

And this is their on-demand fitness studio where you can stream classes like yoga, Insanity, spinning and more.

There were cold towels, complimentary headphones and sparkling water on tap.

Note, this was not a sponsored post. My stay was comped because I had a gift certificate from a project I worked on last year with Marriott but I wanted to share this post with you guys because I think it’s really cool to see a major hotel chain taking interest in creating a healthy and happy travel experience for their customers.

Have you ever stayed in a fitness/health-friendly hotel before? Tell me about your experience. 

Would you take advantage of Stay Well rooms when traveling?