Excerpts from a very interesting article:


When Marriott announced its interest in acquiring Starwood, one would have believed that they factored in a $500 million Starwood IP technology value within their $13.6 Billion offer, and that they would have been salivating at the prospect of having their hands on the fruits of the multi-year transformation experience this IP represented. After all, while stable as a rock, Marriott's own system today centers around 1970's Mainframe TPF technology (MARSHA) suitably kept current via the judicious use of the scotch-tape and wires represented by a cornucopia of front-end gateways and the labor intense support of inflexible legacy code, eclectic data bases, hard-coded interfaces, and a veritable zoo of different property management systems crying for better integration.

Since the race to modernity is on, one would think that with Starwood's acquisition, Marriott was set to score a leap-frogging coup by being able to leverage Starwood's edge in these transformation efforts to its advantage. Right?

Wrong.

After last week's completion of the Marriott/Starwood merger, the news is that Marriott has decided to migrate the Starwood properties to the Marriott system and, aside from some elements, essentially to abandon the Starwood system. You heard correctly: MARSHA stays, and the Starwood System goes away.

Although we have grown accustomed to the fact that the progression of history is to always move forward, Marriott has found a way to define a Back to the Future Transformation Strategy under the principal argument that it will be easier to migrate the 1,200 Starwood properties to the old Marriott system than to migrate the 4,000 Marriott properties to Starwood's 21st Century solution. This argument does not make sense if you consider that IHG will surely be more than happy to be able to migrate its 4,000 properties to the Amadeus system as soon as it becomes available for roll-out in 2018.

One has to wonder if this Marriott decision is the result of a recommendation from an independent consulting company conducting an objective and unbiased assessment of the various options, or simply the result of a tribal mindset from internal Marriott technology decision-makers entrenched into protecting their turf while continuing to do things their own way.

One also has to wonder if the Marriott Board is aware of the future implications of this decision, especially when its competitors fully begin utilizing their new systems—systems that will more readily accommodate emerging demands from guests, such as seamless digitalization of services, improved shopping and pricing experiences, optimized checking and concierge services, mobility enablement, backend cognitive analytics, personalized content and entertainment services and so on.

Given that Marriott is now risking being left behind—especially as it invariably loses the people who forged the Starwood system—it's hard to argue its chosen course of action is in the best interest of its stockholders.

In the end, those of us, who wish for a successful Marriott/Starwood merger, have reason to be concerned.

https://www.hospitalitynet.org/opinion/4078764.html

Everyone keeps quoting that HospitalityNet article written by the former SPG IT guy. I'm sure he's got an axe to grind, but he's dead wrong.

MARSHA is dead. If anything, we wouldn't be having the problems now if they had kept it around. Instead, they started moving "to the cloud" in 2015:
https://diginomica.com/2015/10/07/wh...ms-with-nosql/

Those of us who were Marriott loyalists pre-merger (instead of SPG'ers) know all too well that the website's been slowly devolving over a year now as they moved everything off the old mainframe and to the cloud. Another mistake Marriott made was having NO workbench/test-bed system. It appears everything is being done on the production system. We saw this with the various EMPOWER hotels showing up in Antarctica. How a company with $22BN in revenue can't afford a separate test platform AND redundant production platform is beyond my comprehension.

This has been a problem for years. I ran into it last year when I was on an emergency call and by the time I finished the roads to the flat I normally stay in that town were flooded. Fortunately calling the property directly was able to remedy this. Still, not acceptable in 2018.

Is Marriott's IT Fried?
 

Scary, … and that's not the only issue, I am running into.
https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...ea411a69cc.png

Does anyone have the problem that their login credentials are not being remembered? I have to enter them every time, even though I click the box to remember them. I don't think it's my browser (Chrome) because this works on every other website I use.

scroll down to the middle of the page....there is another option to log in there & that remembers the login details....

That worked. Nice tip, thanks.

IDK if this is a marriott.com website issue or not. I booked a room at Courtyard Bettendorf for my step-dad for 11K points for the first night and then ~ $75/night for the two remaining nights at a traditional rate. I now see on my account that the 11K was reversed and then deducted again, which was fine. Then an additional 6K points were deducted for "Cash and Points". At check-in they appeared to have split the reservation and I got a $0 folio for the first night, which made sense since that was the 11K free night. I then got another folio for all 3 nights for $0. If they charged me 6K points and didn't charge him for those two remaining nights, I'll be thrilled. But if they charged him and took an additional 6K out of my account I'm going to be annoyed. Anyone see this? I made this reservation several months ago.


11/02/2018

Rewards

Cash And Points Redemption Rate

11/02/2018, Cancelled 0 Rewards

+0 Points

11/02/2018

Rewards

Pointsaver Redemption Rate

11/02/2018, Ordered -11,000 Rewards

-11,000 Points

11/02/2018

Rewards

Cash And Points Redemption Rate

11/02/2018, Ordered -6,000 Rewards

-6,000 Points

Just checked some upcoming reservations. In all cases my "guaranteed" selection of King Bed disappeared so once again I went in and added it to about a half dozen reservations. And one reservation where I used two Chase free night certs, the certs disappeared and it's asking me to order reward certificates. And the Chase certs were not returned to my account. Original confirmation clearly shows the certs and zero points. Web now says it needs 50K points. So another painful call to Marriott......

My concern is the lack of transparency on my activity log. I used to see ( with SPG) points for the stay, MAGC, Platinum Check in Points, and any bonuses etc all as line items. It was easy to see if any where missing. Now all I see is Base Points + Elite Points + Extra. They may well be accurate but I have no way of knowing and cannot check if all have been included. If I trusted Marriott it would be OK but with all the cock ups going on I remain cynical. And frustrated.

I haven't been able to see my upcoming reservations on the Starwood website all day.

Surprisingly, there are no issues with the Marriott website. Unfortunately, most of my reservations are on the Starwood site where my SNAs reside. Keeping my 2 accounts separate for now.

Anyone else having trouble seeing their account activity? Whole account activity page has been down for 2+ weeks. Cannot see how many points I've gained off hotel stays, credit card points, etc. etc.

Same here. No activity details available either on web or app. :(