Well, I haven't arrived yet, but I'm already having plenty of frustrations. I called the hotel in SLC to see if my Starwood Gold number was in my record, and lo and behold they didn't even have my reservation, despite my pretty confirmation report on the Travelocity site.

So I called Travelocity and after waiting on hold for a while they told me that I had to call the hotel department. They then gave me a seperate 800 number.

Well, it turns out that the hotel dept. is a seperate company called Hotel Reservation Network, which operates the Discount Hotels web site, and that they don't fax in the reservations to the hotels until about 48 hours before arrival. Since the hotel I was inquiring about was for Wednesday, she said my reservation wouldn't be faxed in until later today or tomorrow.

I then asked her about my reservation for tomorrow in LA. She said that yes, that one was faxed in yesterday and should be there.

I then asked if my Starwood Gold number was in my record, and she said that I had to call the hotel seperately and give them that. I found that frustrating, because my Starwood number is in my Travelocity profile, but apparently the two systems don't communicate like one would expect.

I then called the Westin in LA to check on this reservation, and they can't find it, so I faxed them my confirmation.

Very frustrating and inneffective. My guess is that by the time I arrive, it will be there (w/o my Starwood number), but now I have to keep following up.