Sabai

Alex_I

I have mainly focused on renewing my HHonors Diamond after the August integration. Since then I have stayed in 1 SPG and 3 Marriott hotels.
1) No upgrade from Westin Hilton Head where I have stayed about two dozen times. Breakfast for PLT is now continental because "the merger with Marriott" - this was explained by the front desk. They also do not waive resort fees for PLT because "the merger". Of course!
2) Courtyard Clemson - no difference from a typical GardenInn but not breakfast.
3) Marriott Washingtonian Gaithersburg - was not even given a room at concierge level floor. Requested a King bed but received two double. Run-down Sheraton Pentagon has a better lounge.
4) JW Marriott New Orleans - I was put on the top floor but not into one of the numereous corner rooms. Was promised to get the folio by e-mail but it looks like it was lost in the Marriott IT system. New Orleans -style nova lox for breakfast was the only good thing in a crowded lounge.
5) In my opinion Marriott should get rid off their special roast coffee packed in red envelopes and switch to Starbucks etc.
The Marriott-style coffee machines is what one would find in Hampton Inn.

Web site and IT is another story. You have 29 brands but how I can only see the brands I want to stay in? I can see some bonus points posted but can you spell if those are amenity, green choice, or a specific bonus? Always getting messages like: System errors (30% of the time), Not all your reservations are shown. Images and hotel room descriptions get mixed. For example, when I open my JWMarriott New Orleans reservation I saw "Ocean View" in the room description. Really? After page reloading the ocean view disappeared.

My main frustrations with Marriott/SPG:
a) SPG hotels now sell rooms on the third party websites while the same rooms are unavailable at Marriott.com.
b) Impossible to get a hold of Platinum line, long wait lines, long response from e-mails (5 days), and very little knowledge from people answering your phone calls. For a comparison: called HHonors Diamond desk yesterday and was connected immediately. Agent had no clue about specific promotion, but was willing to look, listen, investigate, and fix everything in 5 min

I am 74 nights with SPG+Marriott this year and will add 16 more (by mostly burning points before they raise hotel categories next year).

MSPeconomist

dayone

H​ow’s Marriott’s Massive Loyalty Merger Going? We Asked 5 Starwood Members​ to Weigh In

MSPeconomist

My latest annoyance, which I just discovered about the Starriott reservation system, is that you cannot go back and pick a different room category or experiment with different dates once you click to look at the listing of night-by-night rates. [To me, it's very natural that if the first or last night looks particularly expensive, I might consider either adjusting the dates of my trip or splitting the stay between two different hotels.] In fact, if availability is tight, the hotel will then display as sold out for the next sixteen minutes. Very frustrating.

Doesn't their IT team ever actually make a hotel reservation? Or haven't they ever paid a focus group to play around with using the website for various typical booking scenarios?

EuropeanPete

I've had problems with this, but I didn't realise it was about availability being taken away for 16min. I will look at a bunch of different rates and room types before booking, but I keep looking at one and then find the hotel sold out. Are you saying that if you look at one option it's removed from inventory for that time?

MSPeconomist

That's what seems to happen once you click on the select button in order to be able to click on the next page to see the detailed day by day rates. At that point, the room is being held for you and you cannot edit your previous choices of dates, rate plan, or room type.
Maybe logging out, logging back in, and starting the search again from the beginning would return the room to inventory, but I didn't try that experiment. While you're doing the reservation on the Marriott website (I suspect that attempting to use the legacy SPG site wouldn't have this problem as I never noticed it before), there's a digital timer starting at 16:00 that counts down how much time remains for you to complete the reservation and says something to the effect that the room will be held for you for sixteen minutes. (Why 16 minutes precisely, as 15 would be more conventional, although IIRC eventbrite uses 8 minutes to pay for tickets, so could Starriott have just arbitrarily decided to double that number?)

ADDED: I'm starting to be suspicious too that when you're looking at rooms, sometimes inventory is shut down (for multiple room types at once, so that you panic and rush to book even at a disadvantageous rate?) or the flexible rates calendar shows nothing for months and months. Later the inventory seems to return sometimes, perhaps by the next day, although it really could be that other people are making and cancelling reservations, but I suspect not so often at very strange hours. Rate plan availability also seems to sometimes disappear when one is browsing/experimenting. Maybe Starriott doesn't like it when I experiment with booking stays of different lengths to see determine hidden minimum stat or check in/out blockages for various rate plans. I'll sometimes divide the reservation into two (rarely more) pieces, back to back at the same hotel and ideally in the exact same room category/type, if doing so saves money.

EuropeanPete

Just wow.

MSPeconomist

I'm also a bit suspicious that Starriott is rapidly changing its mind about whether to offer me their guaranteed Plat+ or whatever inventory at high rates on a few dates.

ADDED: I just discovered that when the confirmation errors out and the website says to come back later, Marriott still seems to hold the room out of inventory for at least 15 minutes, during which you cannot go back to try to complete your own booking (and you can't see the timer either).

Wickersley

Is it just me or are points NOT being awarded for incidental spend at Courtyard Properties?

tfong007

For a missing stay request. I have filed a claim every day for the last 5 days. Its hard to get any sort of service at all from Starriott these days. Frustrating as hell.

margarita girl

runningshoes

Does the Plat line even exist anymore? Last few times I've called I've been routed to a central reservations hub and the agent that answered said they don't have the Plat line anymore.

runningshoes

Forgot to add - only reason I called this morning was because the website was down (again). Couldn't get a reservation extended because their systems were down as well....

lingua101