Several months ago my wife and I arrived at a Design Hotel in Mexico with a confirmed reservation (made months in advance) only to find that hotel didn't have it. There was plenty of confusion between the front desk agent and Marriott, but ultimately the hotel kept insisting that Marriott had not sent them the reservation, therefor the room we had confirmed was not available (occupied by other guests). The hotel had 1 room remaining for our dates, so after not being able to come up with any other alternative we accepted the new room. We had confirmed a top floor suite with a terrace, and ended up with a 2nd floor room over the lobby facing the street.

I've spent 4 months following up with Marriott customer service (4 phone calls, referencing the file number but re-explaining this story each time - along with the fact that the stay and points also never posted afterwards). Each time I was told I would hear back from someone.....but not until the 4th call did I finally get an email from the hotel the next day. The hotel more or less said: "Sorry, we have now posted your stay & points. As you are aware, we showed you that we didn't have your reservation at check-in". I responded with additional questions, but received no further response.

Still in disbelief, I decided to send Marriott an email (with file number) regarding this experience - asking how it's acceptable that a reservation made via the Marriott website was simply "lost" and not honored. I received a response stating that Design Hotels don't participate in the Ultimate Reservation Guarantee, and I received 10k points as a good-will gesture. I replied stating this wasn't simply a situation where a room-type was no longer available - the hotel claims to have not received my reservation at all. Had they not had a room left we would have been stuck trying to find somewhere else to stay. I asked how this was acceptable, but have received no further response.

Has anyone else ever experienced anything like this? As a titanium member with almost 700 lifetime night with Marriott, I'm shocked at just how poorly this has been handled.