itravelalot

I noticed that recently most or all of Marriott's Marriott hotels in Mexico are no longer co-branded CasaMagna. I don't know what that means. Was CasaMagna a local partner for Marriott? What was the significance of the co-branding? But regardless. The JW Marriott in Costa Rica that made headlines here and on the blogs for cheating elites out of upgrades is managed by a third party. I think the same is true for many of Marriott's properties in Mexico. I don't know how many are actually managed by Marriott International. Without corporate managing the property it is more difficult to enforce the standards because someone in corporate's hotel development department may decide they would rather get the revenue from a franchisee and third-party operator than enforce corporate's loyalty program standards. I think this is actually an issue. Loyalty program is a completely separate division from corporate's management and hotel development division. Sometimes loyalty is against the interests of the management division or the hotel development division.