Originally Posted by
craigthemif
In what random bizarro world could Marriott penalize franchisee hotels for Marriott corporate mistakes?
Perhaps you misunderstand the issue. The individual hotels are completely unaware, through no fault of their own, that the customer has cancelled. Therefore they are fully within their rights to charge for the no-show.
It is Marriott corporate that needs to invest in better IT, but they cannot really be bothered because many Bonvoy members keep staying no matter how bad it all gets...
I don't expect Marriott to impose a penalty on the hotel. Instead, the hotel itself should be required to provide some compensation to the OP.
I get it where you're coming from. It's not the hotel's fault, and it was an accidents. But this is no different from me accidentally booking a nonrefundable room. I could have "accidentally" misread the terms, but I still would not be entitled to a refund.
The hotel still has options to avoid this situation from happening, which they choose not to pursue. For example, they could call Marriott to manually verify each guest to make sure there is no cancellation. Cumbersome? Of course. But if the hotel faced a penalty for charging a guest who cancelled, they will do it. And this provides them with the incentive to demand Marriott to fix their IT.