If you’ve got a connection at GRU or you get stuck there because you didn’t get your Yellow Fever vaccine (read about that here: “No yellow fever vaccine and can’t board your flight from São Paulo?“), your Guide would stay at the Sao Paulo Airport Marriott (again). The staff were helpful when I ran into travel challenges, the caipirinhas and the breakfast buffet were excellent, the WIFI speeds were in triple digits, and it’s got the best gym I’ve ever seen in a Marriott. Let’s go through a more detailed review of the Sao Paulo Airport Marriott below. This post does include affiliate links for Booking.com, like this one, because I’ve already stayed at this hotel (twice), and would do it again.
Free shuttle from GRU Airport
A free shuttle from the airport is something that makes travel so much easier when you’re landing in a new country. The Sao Paulo Airport Marriott has large vans that are running back and forth every 30 minutes, from all three terminals.
Because they’re so frequent, they don’t wait long. There’s also no specific waiting area just for the Marriott shuttle, so you need to go to the area where the shuttles pull up. The van was plastered with Marriott logos. I didn’t get a photo of it because just as I saw it, the driver was starting to pull away. So I ran to wave him down.
Details under the photos on where to look for the shuttles.
GRU has three terminals. The Marriott shuttle stops at each of them. When you exit from arrivals (for any of the terminals), look for signs directing you to buses and shuttles. On that photo there, you can see a sign just outside of the door telling you to cross at the crosswalk to get to the hotel shuttle buses that stop along the next road.
One of the best Marriott gyms
People outside of the hotel can get memberships to the gym, so it was usually busy but never too crowded. And the extra customers mean this is a gym that’s significantly better than most hotel gyms. There was a full pilates setup, an area for Crossfit-style exercises, duplicates of popular machines, and properly heavy dumbbells. A rowing machine, too!
The pool was more for tanning and taking photos in a unicorn inflatable, not for doing laps.
A mountain of pao de queijo at the breakfast buffet
The breakfast buffet at the Sao Paulo Airport Marriott was substantial and it did rotate through different options each day, while things like the omelet station and fruit bar stayed consistent. Being an airport hotel, the buffet also started at 5:30am, which was perfect for my jetlagged stomach and wide awake head.
When you arrive, the front desk will also give you a ticket for a free drink at the bar, which opens around 3:00pm. They made a good caipirinha.
How is the Sao Paulo Airport Marriott for digital nomads?
The internet was surprisingly solid (WIFI gave me 150 Mb/s down and 113 up in my room). There was also a wide desk and ergonomic office chair in the room. Both rooms I stayed in had four outlets on the desk, two of which were local double round prongs, and two of which were multi-adapter outlets that could take any plug. They also had an ethernet port at each desk.
The rooms were spacious. They had wood laminate flooring which feels more modern and cleaner than carpet in a hotel room, especially in a humid climate.
I had to spend longer than expected and got to check out two rooms. I didn’t feel cramped doing meetings from the room. A large bed, plenty of space in the bathrooms, the room had big windows (although it’s mostly highways in every direction unless you’re overlooking the pool).
There’s a large grocery store nearby. You can get delivery through Uber. There was enough space in the little fridge to store some food.
One small detail for anybody spending a lot of time in the room working: I didn’t like the coffee in the room. There were more coffee options at breakfast, but they weren’t necessarily that much better to me, just more.
Would I stay there again?
Yes. I did check-in at one other airport hotel near GRU that also had a free airport shuttle: the Hampton Inn by Hilton at Guarulhos. It was more affordable. The breakfast buffet was good. However, the rooms at the Hampton Inn were noticeably worse than the Marriott’s. I actually switched the room I was given initially at the Hampton. And I am famously accepting–I write books on how to accept terrible things. So I would stay again with the Marriott at GRU. It was worth it.
Price: With taxes, it was around $170 USD per night for a room with a King-size bed, including breakfast. Check out prices here on Booking
Address: Av. Ministro Evandro Lins e Silva 10/100 Guarulhos, Sao Paulo 07190-017 Brazil
Also, if you need to get your Yellow Fever vaccine and ICVP, the UBS Parque Cecap is a short walk away.
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