RESIDENCE INN BY MARRIOTT BOZEMAN
6195 E. Valley Center Road, Bozeman, MT, 406-522-1535, 888-236-2427, .
Rates: start at $149 per night for a studio king with fully equipped kitchen and seating area; one-bedroom king suites start at $179. Parking lot.
Stay here if you’re: looking for a roomy place to spread out that’s not right downtown, a business traveler or a family in need of a place to store leftovers and cook a meal or two.
It’s close to: the enormous chain-filled shopping plazas that have cropped up in Bozeman the past few years, with Costco, Home Depot and all the other big boxes. Downtown is a five-minute drive.
The rooms are: New and nicely situated, with a comfy combo of couch, chair and coffee table in the seating area, a full-size refrigerator, two-seat dining pod in the roomy kitchen and plasma-screen TVs.
They put all of the money into: A nice lobby, well-cooked, complimentary daily breakfasts and free “manager’s receptions” each evening that include nonalcoholic beverages and snacks, including a once-a-week barbecue. The parking lot also is large and offers access to all the rooms.
The bottom line: For all of the space in the kitchen, the bathroom area in our room felt cramped; two people getting ready had to squeeze around each other to use the one mirror. Other hotels have done a good job with this by providing another mirror elsewhere for primping. Also, the new plasma-screen TVs are great, but the one in our room had been weirdly attached to the chest of drawers at an angle that meant it was impossible to see from the the bed or the couch, so we had to move the chest twice daily. But otherwise this is a terrific choice.
