Originally Posted by
FlyerGoldII
My analogy - if one has issues with one's hotel room - one can go to the receptionist. He/she has some leeway to give you compensation,but if you go up the ladder, to the supervisor, he/she has more leeway (ie more decision making authority). Again more leeway with the assistant manager, and again more leeway with the manager. So if a true executive customer service desk exists, would that person have a similarly greater decision making authority to resolve customer complaints than his/her counterpart manning the regular customer service desk?
For most complaints, the answer is no.
As I explained, any complaint about a hotel is going to be routed back to the hotel for resolution. That's a true statement regardless of where the complaint is lodged. While not impossible, it's extremely unlikely that anyone in the Marriott CEO's office is going to override anything.
As noted, the exceptions will be if the complaint is related to a life safety issue (broken smoke detectors, health code violations) or if you can prove that a Marriott policies has been broken.
The reason why it's unlikely that any decision by an individual hotel will be overridden is because the chain will have to absorb the costs of compensation. If a policy was broken or if the hotel simply refused to respond to a complain within the required time frame, whatever compensation given to the guest will be charged back to the hotel.
As with lots of things in life, there are a plenty of exceptions. If you happen to be a high-profile meeting planner or the person who runs the travel department of a multinational corporation that provides hundreds of thousand of room nights annually, someone at the corporate level will certainly eat the costs of any additional compensation. But, anyone at that level will already have executive level contacts through the National Sales Office (or some similar area depending upon the hotel group).
For a "regular" guest who can at best only bring 365 room nights annually, the origination of a complaint about a hotel isn't going to change the outcome.