This is a very rosy picture of the hotel "having upgrades" and seeking to give them proactively to elites. I can't say that I've encountered this in the U.S. in years...I guess you're lucky. Based on the rooms I receive when doing OLCI, what I see evidence of is staff just trying to map the first rooms available to the first guests to check in, so they can make their key card packs and be done with it.

Yeah, there are definitely mixed experiences with upgrades. Honestly, I rarely receive them as a Titanium. But there are other stories littered throughout the Marriott forum of people seeing their room change/upgrade in the mobile app between online check in and arrival. And also some claims of it changing back!

Anyway, if it gives me even a 1% better chance of an upgrade, I'll check in online since it takes less than 30 seconds of my time. The first thing I'd like to see Marriott do with OLCI is add the room choice like Hilton has...I very much like that feature...although I do wonder if that prevents me from getting an upgrade at Hilton. But I'm only Gold there, and not sure I've ever received an upgrade, or even what I'd be eligible for -- typically Hilton is my second choice if there isn't an acceptable Marriott, and it's usually not a fancy Hilton brand.

I always do the mobile check in and then use the messaging functionality to politely ask about an upgrade. Best success as a Gold has been in the Disney / Buena Park, CA area where on Saturdays they frequently upgrade me to a suite. A few other random successes too, Sheraton in downtown Seattle they put me on the 30th floor for the week, corner room with nice views :)

Not going to take this too far off track into the land of a thousand threads on this topic, but...gotta say - as someone who was a Hilton guy for many years, always hearing about this promised land of Marriott, and now has come over (largely due to alignment of work projects / coworkers) to Marriott for ~50% (so about 100 nights MR, 100 Hilton)...I scratch my head as to why people rave about Marriott. Maybe back in some day it was the leader, but honestly in most respects that are important to me, Hilton comes out ahead. More upgrades (not even counting SNAs that were cleared and then clawed back by the properties...), clearer breakfast benefit rules, and I'm currently getting roughly 2x the return on spend (taken as the ratio of $ value of redeemed rooms to $ paid for nights needed to earn points) with Hilton. It actually pains me to spend nights at MR properties when I look after the stay and see that I'm getting 1/4 to 1/3 the points that I'd get with Hilton (while redemptions with MR in terms of absolute # of points range from ~60% of that of Hilton to parity at the higher end of the award chart).

So I do find it funny when people (including most of my coworkers) only speak the language of Marriott, and scoff at other options not even being "acceptable" - maybe it's just me, but as someone who splits 60% of his life evenly between the two big chains, I'm leaning Hilton these days...

A quirk with Hilton's mobile check-in is that if you get a late check-out, you cannot use the app when you leave.

I often will book a AAA rate. My AAA number is stored at Hilton. I do online checkin, choose my room. Next day I arrive and go to my room.

At Marriott, even though I have done digital checkin, I still need to go to the desk, present various id, then get my key. Marriott certainly has more aspirational properties. Hilton certainly has better technology.

Very true! But to be clear, I don't think that this explicitly has to do with mobile check-in. You can use mobile check-out even if you checked in manually, and the same issue as above holds.

I did OLCI once on the Starwood app and as I arrived it was showing I had a JS. When I got there they actually gave me a basic room and the FD claimed that my JS had just been sold to a guest who turned up on spec and offered to pay on the spot for a suite.

My takeaway from this was that OLCI meant nothing at all.

Well, two things:

1. That was a different company and app
2. Always take a screen shot when you get an upgrade

To be honest, after the one bad experience I had not getting the room I booked, I always take a screen shot of my room even before an upgrade now -- if it's for a personal trip where the room type actually matters to me.

Thought I would bump this thread because the topic of humanless, touchless entry should now be a rather popular one, yet I found it interesting that the various discussions on re-opening procedures (e.g. the interview with Arne) haven't mentioned digital key.

To me, an opportunity to go straight to the room without standing in a line in a crowded lobby and then ending up face-to-face with an employee only a few feet away (who in turn stands being exposed to customers in close proximity all day), well, that sounds like a no brainer. But at least so far, Marriott's system seems to be ages beyond Hilton's - for Hilton, digital key is almost ubiquitous, while I've encountered it maybe once at a Marriott property in hundreds of stays. I wonder if this is something that Marriott corporate is considering fast-tracking. I think it could certainly drive stay decisions during this period where everyone is still acutely aware of minimizing close human contact.

Very good point and well written.
I will echo the Hilton vs Marriott regarding then digital key too. My previous job was Hilton, when I left in 2018 I would say 95% of Hilton hotels had the digital key, and they were very very reliably.
Marriott still today, maybe what 15% of the hotels? And it works what, half the time. Maybe even less?

I personally rarely went straight to my room. However, now when I travel again. That’s going to be way up on my list.

Last week I stayed at an Aloft in the DC area. I checked-in online, got the keyless entry thing set up, and when I arrived at the property I walked straight to the elevator (I did say hi to the FD person), went to my room and opened it with my phone. It was just me traveling so I didn’t really care about upgrades. This was a very smooth process.

I agree. Nearly every Hilton brand I've stayed at had digital keys via the app, and very few Marriotts I've stayed at have had it. Hopefully Marriott fast tracks their digital keys and enables them for more properties.

When Hilton IT is putting you to shame, you know you have problems

The simple fact is that IT projects and other big enterprise transformations take time. Hilton started running years ago, and it was bumpy. But they got a jump while MR was still focused on post merger integration blocking and tackling. In my experience, Hilton really hit its stride sometime around last year. UX stuff like the way the website looks, etc. is of course always open to debate, but when it comes to functionality - doors opening, points going in and out, stays crediting, folio availability, etc. - Hilton has been really solid as of late.

I actually would not just say that MR IT is bad, but that at this juncture, while it took a while to get there, Hilton’s capabilities are objectively quite good.