Originally Posted by
cfischer
complete nonsense. Unless the hotel does it incorrectly, you will get the absolute best exchange rate possible on the day you settle your bill. I have used Marriott GCs all over the world and in particular with the 'new' (now 5+ years) system the issue that we sometimes experiences 10+ years ago w/ exchange rates has pretty much gone away, unless the hotel does something wrong.
Unless hotels deliberately to do the scam conversion to translate the USD value GC into local currency to do it, i.e. charge you a HIGHER amount of USD. At least the 2 properties told me that would be how they handled GC payments when I inquired - Hong Kong Marriott Skycity and Macao Sheraton. They readily admitted this was NOT the way how Marriott GC should be handled, but they blamed nobody there knew how to operate the Given system... Of course I did not use GC.
All other hotels that used the Givex system as they should, would get more or less the mid point of market rate of that day. Renaissance LHR told me they used a different system because they could not install Givex, it was a weird one - they sent an email with the GC details to the handling company which then applied the amount to the folio. The night manager told me the exchange rate would be Very Close to market rate. And he was right on the target.