That can get quite expensive if you are away from your mobile phone's home country.

I find it much easier to walk a few feet to their business center and bring up Marriott.com where I can enter the Gift Card number and see the balance immediately. I have had associates do this for me after charging the card and providing me a printout of the balance. Probably a good procedure to implement company wide IMO.

FWIW, I have had very little problems using the gift cards. Yes, one must be careful not to lose them, but that is what the hotel safes are for. I saved well over a $1000 on last year's travel by using gift cards, so the extra precautions are well worth it IMO.

Regarding the exchange rate thread that came about recently. This subject has been talk about numerous times here on FT, so I am sure there are those like myself that just chose not to post instead of posting "do a search". FYI, Marriott Gift Cards ARE pre-paid Visa cards and as such Visa will charge their usual 3-4% surcharge when they do the currency conversion, same as if I or you had used our regular Visa card. Marriott doesn't do the currency exchange when using a Gift Card or charge the exchange fee, Visa does. It is the cost of international travel. The only way to get around this is to pay in cash... but then you have to pay the exchange rate of converting US dollars to the foreign currency. Either way, you're going to pay.