I know a guy who just got laid off from SPG's IT dept. According to him "Starwood has dramatically reduced its emphasis on IT investment, infrastructure, and support."

Let's hope Bob and George are in good shape...

Reduction in those things and a few bad hamsters might make SPG.com as craptastic, if not more craptastic, than Hilton.com.

I never noticed any emphasis in the first place. I doubt I'll notice its continuing absence any more than I did before.

SPG.com is already the most craptastic hotel site out there, hands down. There are probably obscure Albanian hotel chains with better functioning websites.

*cough* ;) *cough*

In other news, expect a drop in price of the MacBook Air in the next few months...

Agreed.

I'm not an SPG guy, so I always thought that Hilton.com was the low bar of hotel website achievement.

Not at all. Essentially, as soon as an SPG rep touches or modifies your reservation, you can no longer view it on SPG.com. Reservations may randomly disappear from the site (so I make sure to store all of mine in a special email inbox folder). Details of points reservations (like room type) cannot be viewed online. Whenever you cancel a reservation, spg.com saves the identifying info for that room type for all future reservations you try to make in the same session. Accordingly, if you cancel a refundable reservation, then look for a replacement, you may book it thinking it's refundable (because the cancellation policy disclaimer says it is refundable), when it is not. There are many other issues, as well.

Other than the fact that Hilton may require signing in more than once in the same session, and there are easy work-arounds for that, Hilton's site is quite functional and allows you to do a lot. SPG's website doesn't even allow you to change an existing reservation without first canceling it — and it's the hardest hotel website I've found to navigate.

I was considering making a comment about the mass debaters in this thread, but didn't want to be instantly labeled as "that guy"

Don't you mean master debaters?

On Hilton's website, I can see all of my reservations, regardless of booking source. On SPG's website, I can only see reservations booked on SPG's website. On Hilton's website I can change my reservation without first canceling it. SPG.com tells me to cancel the reservation and rebook from scratch — and doing that without first closing my browser may mean that I don't get to select new preferences for the new reservation. Hilton's website lets me log in and see about a year's worth of folios for past stays in PDF form — SPG can't even send me a folio after checkout by e-mail consistently because some hotels have that capability, and others don't. Hilton's website is logically laid out and I can quickly change my preferences, or look up information on the program. SPG's website is a maze, and it's hard to navigate from looking at something like my upcoming reservations to looking at my account activity without going back to the site's home page.

Yay! Client work is done, and I'm just a few minutes from jetting out the door and heading for Houston. See some of y'all in a couple of hours.

I guess I have it good in HH-land. Corrected I stand.

The handiest thing about being a lefty golfer is you can face and talk to your friends while at the driving range.

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