NewEXP

I'm looking for some advice on how to deal with an unfortunate situation I've encountered with trying to book a room for a professional conference being held at a Marriott property. The conference organizers sent out an email to all interested parties two weeks ago saying that the block of rooms they had reserved would open at noon the following Friday. However, one of the conference attendees happened to find out that the hotel was actually taking reservations for these rooms three hours prior to noon that Friday. As soon as this person made their reservation, they put out the word using social media that the block was actually open earlier than announced. Word spread very quickly, and the block pretty much filled up within 90 minutes. By the time noon rolled around, only a couple of mid-conference week nights were left with one or two rooms.

Being an old f@rt, I wasn't tuned-in to the social media notice about the early opening of the reservation block. I called just after noon, per the announced opening time, and was told no rooms were available for the week. This is a pretty sizable Marriott, so I was shocked that the whole hotel could have filled up within a few minutes. However, I figured I would be fine because I'm a Lifetime Platinum member (the up-side to being an old f@rt), and one of the advertised benefits is "Guaranteed Availability" for bookings made within 48 hours.

The agent on the phone was unable to push the reservation through using the guarantee, so I asked her to connect me with the MR Platinum customer service desk to fix the problem. When I spoke to the Platinum desk person, she explained to me that each property is allowed a limited number of days per year in which they do not have to honor the Availability Guarantee for special events, but that each such event has to be approved by Marriott Corporate HQ. Then she put me on hold so she could call the hotel. When she came back, she said she was unsuccessful because the hotel had contracted out all of the rooms to the conference organizers. I asked her if the hotel had obtained the necessary "special event" permission from Marriott HQ to deny me the Availability Guarantee, and she said they had not, but they still wouldn't allot me a room.

By this point, I'm getting pretty steamed, so I decided it was time to post to social media myself about Marriott not honoring my promised benefit. Their social media team got in touch with me right away, and within a day they were able to get someone from the hotel to contact me via email. This person reiterated the rationale that they could not honor my benefit because they had contracted out the whole hotel to the conference organizers, and they suggested I contact the organizers directly. So I did that, but of course the conference organizers have no obligation to honor Marriott's elite member benefits, so they denied my request to overbook the rooms in order to accommodate me.

So now I'm wondering if there's anything left to do. I understand that the hotel has a contract for all the rooms with the conference organizer, but they must also have a contract with Marriott Headquarters that requires them to honor the elite benefits (unless they get the special event waiver, which they did not). Is there someone at Marriott HQ I could write to that might be able to impress upon the hotel's management the importance of honoring those benefits?

I'm mad enough about this that I'm about to do a status match to one of the other chains and only walk into Marriotts to redeem my substantial balance of accrued points from here forward. There's zero value for a benefit that can be ignored without review just because a hotel wants to do so.

Thanks for your input.

Jeff

leeky

a Class Action lawsuit against this holier then thou hotel for breach of Contract, false advertising and fraud does come to mind inasmuch as they agreed to be bound by certain Marriott T&Cs which they refuse to abide by.

aaupgrade

There are two situations where Plat Guarantee can be denied. 1) for special event for which the hotel has gotten approval from corporate. Like Indy 500, Superbowl, etc. 2) defacto special event when the entire hotel has been contracted, which is the case here, and for which corporate approval is not required.

No recourse.

Often1

How does that work since the property isn't required to provide the "guarantee" when it has contracted out its facilities (which, by the way, makes sense)? All filing what you refer to as a class action (who is the class, by the way?) Even the most bottom feeding of the bottom feeders won't take a case which would be dismissed on the first filing.

OP simply asked the wrong question and got the right answer to the wrong question.

jr1202sr

http://www.marriott.com/rewards/memb...s/guarantee.mi

I don't see here any small print that allows Marriott not to honor the 48 hour rule on their website. Typically if there were exceptions to a Guarantee they should be put in the footnote of the page.

48-Hour Guaranteed Availability
Traveling on short notice? We guarantee you’ll always have a room for any paid stay. Just make your reservation 48 hours before arrival at any of our 4,000+ participating hotels, excluding Marriott Vacation Club. [PLATINUM ONLY]

I consider it false advertising. Notice there are disclaimers about 1000 points in lieu of free breakfast at some locations AND Platinum Arrival Gift has a disclaimer for Ritz, Edition, etc.

How could this not be considered misleading or a bait and switch? The word "Guaranteed" carries a lot of weight.

aaupgrade

Depends where one looks: http://www.marriott.com/marriott-rew...ts/platinum.mi

A shortcoming of info found on Marriott.com IMO. Same can be said about other wording, or lack thereof, of benefits and exceptions.

jr1202sr

Doesn't change that it is misleading and a bait and switch and possibly could be used in Court against Marriott. Clearly Marriott is aware that the disclaimer isn't there and has done nothing to fix it. This is not a simple oversight. If you google around a bit you will find that this has been like this since at least 2014 and they have been made aware of it and have chosen to leave it as is.

That tells you everything....

SkiAdcock

This (unfortunately for the OP).

freeflyin

You may want to pursue this part of the issue with both the conference organizers and the hotel. The early opening of the reservation block is where I would direct my frustration.

Continue to check back with the hotel for cancellations and if nothing opens up,hopefully there is a nearby competitor that would be glad to take your revenue. As a LTP, I would also let Marriott know that your business went elsewhere and express your frustration with this situation-they probably won't care,but they need to be aware that some properties are mishandling room blocks.

pinniped

In my years as MR Plat, I found that Plat Availability Guarantee useless in the cases where I needed it most. Properties almost always could wiggle out of it using the "special event" clause. And no, I never was attempting to book Indy 500, Super Bowl, or anything remotely on that level of event.

Starwood also has special event clauses, but I've found (in many experiences) that it's pretty focused on the Super Bowl type events. Marriott lets the properties run wild with it, which pretty much kills the guarantee.

I think I'm about 2 for 7 in my attempts to use it (with the 2 being regular summer weeks in Seattle...I'll give the Seattle Waterfront Marriott credit for honoring it at only a 30-35% markup from my regular corporate rate).

My failures have included Courtyards and Fairfields in small towns where I couldn't even figure out what major event they were using as their excuse.

MSPeconomist

Hyatt seems to allow exceptions for "ordinary" professional football games, not just championship games or SuperBowl type events. It knocks out a lot of fall weekend night's for the guaranteed availability.

I'm surprised the OP's hotel isn't willing to walk someone for the rack rate rather than a conference rate. I can't imagine that the hotel's contract with the organization prohibits overbooking or prohibits the sale of any room except through the organization's room block. I've seen lots of people being walked at big conventions and I also routinely see a few hotel guests that know nothing about the conference.

pinniped

Was it a Hyatt or a Marriott that treated regular-season baseball as a "special event"? We had a thread about it a few years ago...only reason I thought it was a Marriott is because I don't spend a lot of time on the Hyatt board.

I want to say it was Atlanta, which is ironic because that's about the most disinterested pro sports fanbase in America and none of their arenas/stadiums are remotely unique or attractive for visiting fans.

(Sorry Atlanta, but you know I'm right.)

NewEXP

All - thanks for the feedback. It sounds like the majority opinion is it'd just be a waste of time to complain to Marriott HQ about this. Frustrating...

@leeky: The lawsuit idea is interesting, but a) I simply don't have the time or energy to put into that, b) I imagine the number of people in my situation with this hotel is probably not that large, and c) as @aaupgrade pointed out, some versions of the MR T&C do specify that the benefit can be denied in certain situations. The T&C are unspecific about what those situations are, so that clause probably guts the benefit completely in any legal sense. Just my non-lawyerly opinion, though.

@aaupgrade: Is your information on the two situations you listed for denied platinum availability authoritative? I ask because when I talked to the Platinum customer care representative, she only mentioned the "special event" situation, not the contract situation. Also (I should have mentioned this in my original post), I know for certain that the entire hotel isn't under contract to the conference because a colleague of mine booked a room for the same week at the non-conference rack rate a few days before the block opened. They wouldn't have made that room available to confirm for him if the whole hotel was under contract, would they? As an aside, the colleague was smart about this - after the block opened, he called the hotel and had them change his rack rate to the conference rate, so he got the security of an advanced booking plus the financial benefit of the lower room rate. Lesson learned for me on how to game the system...

@Often1: How was my question wrong? I asked for advice on whether I had any further options to pursue.

@freeflyin: Yes, the early opening of the block was the root cause of this situation - I was ready to dial in with everybody else at the stated opening time. I mentioned this in my email conversation with the conference organizers, and their response was "The block did technically open prior to noon but that was not publicized publicized primarily due to the fact that the hotel’s staff would not be available, as noted above. What we did not expect was that while we did not publish the link until noon and advertised noon as the opening time, countless attendees began calling the reservations lines much earlier in the day, and, well, the rest is history." In other words, yes we screwed up, but there's nothing we're going to do about it. The organizers really have no reason to overbook a room for me based on my MR status - that means nothing to them. On your point about nearby competitor hotels, yes there are plenty. The advantage to staying with this Marriott is I am able to only go down to the conference talks I am interested in and spend the rest of the time working in my room, I use the Concierge Lounge for informal business meetings, and of course the free breakfast.

The hotel in question is in a small town outside of Houston. They have a very large conference facility, and the number of rooms is not nearly enough to fill that facility. They rely on the fact that there are a lot of other (mostly smaller) hotels in the area for their conference-goers to stay at. So if contracting out the hotel's rooms to conferences is a legitimate way to deny the availability guarantee, I can easily imagine that this hotel never has to honor that guarantee to anyone - they have conferences there all year. That sort of seems contrary to the spirit of the advertised benefit, even if there's a legal loophole.

Part of me wonders if the hotel management might be very happy about the screw-up with opening the block early because my guess is that the demographic of their guests will now skew toward the graduate student attendees of the meeting who pay close attention to social media and don't typically have elite status. More senior attendees who would be more likely to have elite status don't typically have the time to watch for Tweets about early block openings. This will lower the amount of food the hotel has to provide in the lounge and the costs of other benefits provided to elites. I should mention that in my experience attending the same conference at this hotel for many years, they are very elite-unfriendly. Every single year I have had to call them multiple times after my stay to get the MR points associated with my stay to post. They're a terrible representative of the Marriott brand.

Slightly OT, but does anyone have any suggestions as to which other chain(s) I should be considering for a status match and my future business? I've been in the Marriott system so long now, I haven't really paid attention to any of the other programs.

Thanks,
Jeff (OP)

pinniped

The biggest direct comparable to Marriott is HHonors. It has competing brands up and down the spectrum, from Hampton Inn to Waldorf Astoria.

Starwood and Hyatt are both solid programs, but neither has the breadth of MR or HH, especially if you need the rural/small-town properties.

Every program has its pros and cons. Depends on how you earn, how you like to redeem, and what elite benefits are most important to you. Study carefully before you switch...

VickiSoCal

I don't think any chain will be able to guarantee a room to an elite if they have promised a third party the entire hotel.