A shocking Marriott IT fail
 

On Monday night (Asia time) I made a booking on Marriott.com using points for 5 nights (the redeem 4 get 5 nights deal) for 140,000 points at the JW Marriott Shanghai Tomorrow Square. In the usual way I entered my credit card details for guarantee purposes, and it generated the booking confirmation page. I thought nothing more of it and flew to Shanghai on Tuesday, assuming it would show up in the SPG/Marriott app and also be in my email account.

Imagine my horror then when I arrived at the JW Tomorrow Square on Tuesday night (yesterday) to discover that the hotel has no record of my booking. The lady, Karen, kindly helped me charge my phone so I could look up the app and my email to retrieve the record. I was then horrified to discover that the booking was not displaying in the app, no points had been deducted, and that no email had been sent despite having seen a booking confirmation page with confirmation number the night before. I never print those pages when booking with the hotel direct because I expect the hotel to have a record and have never had a problem before.

In fairness to Karen at check-in, she did try hard searching the system and even called the other JW and Marriott City Centre just to double check that I hadn't inadvertently booked the wrong Marriott, although I was always 100% certain that I had booked the Tomorrow Square.

As a result of the incompetence of the Marriott IT people, I had to waste an hour of my time in embarrassment at the JW Tomorrow Square and pay for an extra taxi fare to go to another hotel. This is an utterly ridiculous situation and I think it only fair that Marriott HQ offer some points in compensation for the inconvenience.

In the meantime, take this post as fair warning not to trust the Marriott.com or SPG.com websites, and to always screenshot or print booking confirmations because you can't trust the system to work.

I have found it helps to mentally take a step back a decade (or two) when dealing with Marriott now:
- get a hard copy of your folio and take a picture of it (as the email version may never come)
- screen shot any reservations you make
- rely less on the IT and more on human intervention (though their own hands are often tied)

This is the end of the world as we know it...

I have been a Marriott Rewards member for over 20 years. During that time, I have probably made thousands of reservations via the Marriott website.
Whenever I make a reservation, I do three things:

• Write down the reservation # or print out the confirmation page
• verify that the reservation shows up in my account
• verify that I receive the confirmation e-mail (which is almost always instantaneous)

Seems like you failed to do any due diligence. Based on the facts, I'm guessing you did something wrong.
But as usual, people here like to play the victim card and blame Marriott for their failure to take even the most minimal actions to secure a reservation (if indeed you did make a reservation).

Marriott owes you NOTHING.

Newman

I'll never understand why there are so many loyalty program apologists on FT. Does it not occur to you that you shouldn't need to do all those things when you make a reservation?

OP was SPG...we didn't have to do these things before...

I have had this at the top of 'My Trips' on Marriott's website for about 3 weeks:

'Unfortunately there's an issue displaying some of your reservations. Please check back later. We apologise for any inconvenience.'

The only thing I can suggest is you contact the hotel in future if you can and confirm they've got your reservation. You shouldn't have to do it I know but Marriott's just not reliable at the moment and I dread to think what their IT department is going to do come January and the merger proper.


CLE guy, that's a bit harsh...

I heard from a friend that Marriott IT was doing some tinkering/updating & it was going to impact reservations being made Oct 14th-16th. Sounds like the OP might have gotten caught up in that?

Re: the steps Newman takes wrt his reservations, I do similar for ALL hotel chains & have done so for years. It's just good practice/taking ownership/responsibility in the case there is a mix-up - and takes very little of my time to make sure I have a confirmation # & put an email confirmation w/ reservation details into a folder on my computer.

Given we all know IT is a mess right now, I think it prudent that everyone have some kind of back-up rather than 'thinking nothing more of it & assuming it will show up on the app'.

Cheers.

I can't count on both hands how many times I got 99% of the way through an online purchase/booking (bill pay, concur, marriott, AA, Southwest, etc..) without hitting the final button thinking I had. I may be a little spacier than some but before I board any flight I check everything because I have shown up before without a place to stay or a car... It could be Marriott's IT for sure, but in 800+ Marriott nights (including a bunch post 08/18) I've never reserved a room and then not had the res in my account. Maybe it's tied to some tinkering mentioned upthread...

I've had that same item in my reservation list on the website for a few weeks also. Nobody at Marriott can tell me why... that is if I can even get a response out of anybody.

Oh and at this point I don't think there is such as thing as a 'shocking Marriott IT fail'. They are so bad on the technology and customer service side now that I have zero expectations.

How?

Sure. But the post I was responding to said that for the last twenty years they had 1) printed the confirmation or written the corresponding confirmation number; 2) verified the confirmation appears in the account; and 3) verified receipt of the email. Further, anybody who did not do all of those things every time is to blame for any issues that may arise. That seems...excessive? Things happen. Life intervenes. If I can't trust the providers I've chosen to deliver quickly, seamlessly, and without headache, maybe it's time to find a new provider.

Or are all the IT issues that intrepid FTers have reported here these last two months really their own fault?

Your post makes perfect sense if marriott wants to send "please babysit your reservations as we dont know if our IT records them" message to prospective customers...