anteater

Welcome to the club!

Sadly, Marriott has turned its back on the top tier elite guests, who are among their highest spenders.

Kacee

I recently had a really positive Ambassador experience. Wanted to add a second night to existing reservation at Ren Carambola (STX), but website and app were only showing availability for a three night minimum. Emailed Ambassador desk, and got a very prompt response that they could confirm me for the second night. Traded several very pleasant emails with an Ambassador based in Canada named Laura. Would be very happy to work with her again.

jjLDNY

I’m about to hit ambassador, and I’ve accepted that I shouldn’t expect anything meaningful. However I see a lot of people say that they ‘contact the hotel directly’ instead.

Could you elaborate on what types of things require you to contact the hotels directly? The only thing I ever do if I’m in town is sometimes pop in and ask about upgrades/specific rooms or something before I book. Am I missing some sort of trick?!

anteater

Call the hotel, ask for the front desk, provide your reservation and AMB #, and politely request an upgrade if available. If you’re a repeat guest, a good hotel will treat you better than a first time AMB guest.

craigthemif

True, but if you're actually a repeat guest, you don't need to do any of the above, because on check in you'll be told "nice to see you again, here's the key for your suite / upgraded room..."

(or you're staying at a lousy hotel you shouldn't be staying at so often...)

kaizen7

Pretty much all reasonable requests that we usually get done through our ambassadors can be done by contacting the hotel directly.
From requesting upgrades, informing them about special stays, request feather pillows, and even making reservations at local restaurants.

At current times where we lose our personal ambassadors and hotels occupancy are low (on some properties) I believe it will be better for each individual hotel to be proactive reaching out the incoming guests by sending out those personalised email from the concierges/butlers.
Not just those preformatted welcoming emails sent by unattended mailbox.

My recent stays at 3 non Bonvoys properties which don't belong to any loyalty program, or their loyalty programs didn't include personal ambassador manage to reach out to me personally before the stays.
Capella Ubud and Raffles Bali butlers sent the emails 1 week before check in to inquiry about any special requirements for the stay.

MSPeconomist

Raffles is a higher level hotel than just about anything in the Bonvoy portfolio.

anteater

True, the advice was intended for a new guest.

kaizen7

Can see that easily

Then again, if St Regises and the likes can take a page of them during this period it can improve the hotels service and the guests experience.
The butler/concierges just need to email ambassador members, which should be manageable at current rate.

At this time when hotel are competing for limited amount of tourists dollar, they should be more creative and might need to do extra miles to earn that.

CPH-Flyer

The Asian St Regis and Ritz-Carltons generally do email guests in advance, not just the Ambassador members. They did before the pandemic, they do now. It could maybe seem that the North American properties have taken the pandemic as an opportunity to erode their customer service experience even further. Which is an issue, but more geographical than chain wide.

MSPeconomist

Many USA hotels are trying to operate at very low staffing levels. Regardless of title, the person who might have been tasked with various aspects of elite relations might have been furloughed and others don't have the time to pick up the slack. GMs set priorities and contacting elites personally in advance of arrival might not be near the top of the list.

jjLDNY

So.. For those of you Ambs who are being unfaithful.. What are you thinking?


I just hit Amb and will likely spend another 15 or so nights in NY and although I'm usually an advocate of enjoying what you've earned.. NY right now doesn't many many hotels open, and those that are don't have any lounges to take advantage of right now, nor are there any good hotels downtown to get an upgrade from.

Any other hotels worth checking out that might have breakfast or something?

dcstudent

Just made Ambassador for the first time (and during a pandemic, weird year). Often above 100 nights - but actually hit the spend. Enjoyed the mixed messages in my first two emails from Marriott.

Email 1: General marketing email welcoming me to Ambassador, bragging about all of the wonderful benefits I'll now get...including a personal ambassador!
Email 2: General welcome email purporting to be from an individual ambassador, letting me know I won't have a personal ambassador but bragging about how all of the general ambassadors are super highly trained and waiting for my email or call (and providing me the general email and phone #).

Just enjoying that months after getting rid of personal ambassadors Marriott can't be bothered with changing their automatic emails. Fortunately, thanks to Flyertalk my hopes/expectations aren't high for the program anyway.

Kacee

Here's my current take on Ambassador.

Guaranteed on-property benefits beyond Titanium are basically nil. This is the biggest disappointment. Spend $20k, and get nothing additional guaranteed. Beyond guaranteed benefits, I don't feel I've gotten anything extra on-property in terms of upgrades or otherwise.

Email and phone service has been pretty good. Feels like the Ambassadors are sitting around waiting for emails, and turnaround has been very quick. There's some variation in the quality of the responses; overall though, most Ambassadors have really tried to be helpful. But the second level frustration is that their ability to actually accomplish anything meaningful is hit or miss when it comes to dealing with properties.

At the individual property level, I've felt more appreciated as Hyatt Explorist than Marriott Ambassador. That's pretty sad.

Wozza2404

After advice here not to bother pushing for Ambassador over Titanium, I have started staying at Hyatts. Got a status match which gave me Explorist for 90 days, and Globalist for a year if I do 20 nights in those 90 days - which I'll hit next week. I've been quite impressed with the Hyatt properties - and friends who have Globalist have nothing but good things to say about the concierge service (which is similar to Ambassador, I guess).

With my Hilton Diamond being valid until Mar 2022 through their extension I'll likely spend a fair bit of time exploring Hyatt next year - though I'm tempted to still put 60 nights through Hilton to avail the 'gift of Diamond status' benefit.

Can't see me doing many Marriott stays. The Westin Dubai and Le Meridien Dubai Airport are the only properties I have been impressed with (with regard to status recognition) and I'm pretty sure that has more to do with me being a regular at those hotels than my actual status. I do have a load of SNAs that need using though, so I'll be sure to use those at some point.