Hotel Review – JW Marriott Kuala Lumpur
homer| April 22, 2025 6:32 pmOur hotel in KL was the JW Marriott Kuala Lumpur. We chose this hotel because of its proximity to key activities we were planning to do. The hotel is across the street from one of the largest shopping malls here named the Pavilion. The mall has dozens of restaurants and endless shopping and was a 1 minute walk from our hotel.
The staff and service at the hotel was good although a few times at breakfast it seemed to take a while to get coffee. We’re not sure why coffee has to be ordered through the staff during breakfast in Southeast Asia especially since the buffets are all self-service. It would seem to make sense to make coffee self-service as well but that’s a mystery to solve another day.
Like the other Marriott hotels we’ve stayed at throughout SE Asia, the food buffets here offer an endless variety of food. There are more Malaysian options at these buffets than the other hotels we’ve stayed at in southeast Asia. You walk through this cool green tunnel from the hotel to get to the restaurant.
The soup station was my favorite breakfast bar. I loaded up with veggies and then plopped some protein from one of the other bar areas since they only offered seafood here (image below).
My last breakfast meal below in Kuala Lumpur.
Pool area – pretty nice but could use some updating/refresh.
Recommend?
If we return to Kuala Lumpur, we’ll likely stay at the JW Marriott again so we’d recommend it if it fits your itinerary but you should be aware of a few things:
- We were shocked to learn that this JW Marriott did NOT have a business center. We are doing calls while we are here in Malaysia and they often need to be done late at night. At other Marriott hotels in SE Asia we used the business center and had an office or room to make those calls, we were provided access to the Executive Lounge and used an area in there to take calls late however this area closes at 11:45 p.m. so be aware if you need a late night spot to make phone calls late at night.
- The Executive Lounge had lackluster food options during afternoon time. We had egg and salmon tiny sandwiches which weren’t bad but the menu didn’t change from day to day. The desert and cereal snack options also never changed day to day while we were there. They weren’t bad just repetitive.
- The breakfast buffet, while huge and loaded with great food, didn’t seem to have enough staff to service the volume of people coming into the restaurant in the morning. On several occasions it took 10+ minutes to get our coffee. The problem was worse early in the morning as opposed to after 8 a.m. On our last day, we found the coffee machine and just served ourselves coffee.
The hotel is located in a great part of Kuala Lumpur and the staff and service was excellent and the only minor issue we had was during breakfast. We didn’t have any issues at the Executive Lounge or anywhere else. The hotel is located close to restaurants, shopping, and other entertainment so it’s a great central location if it’s your first time visiting or you want to be in the heart of the city.
