Originally Posted by
Marriott Concierge
Thank you rahmanbar for sending a personal message alerting me to this thread. I am sorry to say I had overlooked it. I hope this answers your questions.
The hold is determined by sum of three factors, the length of stay, room rate and tax, and something called the incidental factor. The first two are simple math, you take your room rate and tax and multiple it by the number of nights you will be staying. However the incidental factor is less constant. This amount is based on the typical spending habits of the property’s guests. This means you can expect to have a much larger hold at a resort location than you would typically have at an Airport location because guest tended to spend a lot more on incidentals. Likewise guests typically spend more at certain international locations than at many domestic locations.
Once the incidental factor is created, like Socrates said, there is no human determination of what the hold amount will be. The hold is determined and processed by the hotels system based on the factors mentioned above.
Thanks for the prompt reply but what you've stated begs two questions from me (others may have additional ones).
Since the amount is determined (automatically) at the property level via an arithmetical formula and automatically "processed by the hotel's system" it would appear that the
amount that would be "put on hold" could be calculated at the time an online reservation is made and included in the rate rules (or as new or in a different category).
Secondly, and this gets to the heart of the issue that's arisen in this thread -- "How long before that "hold" will be released and again become available on the guest's credit card?
After all, if it's reasonable and prudent to process a "hold" (and IMO it certainly is), once checkout is complete shouldn't the hold be released in a timely fashion (in other words before several days have elapsed)?
After all, the hotel would still have a record of the cc number of the card that was used when booking that could be charged in the event of "surprise" late charges..
I hope that Marriott realizes that unnecessarily long holds have severe impact on guests, particularly the ones that Marriott proclaims they regard so highly? (And I think they truly do.)
I think the "hold length" is something that Marriott should analyze so as to establish a uniform ome (including it on confirmations) for all Marriott-flagged properties.
Thank you.