bhrubin

EuropeanPete

MW147

I agree with all of this.

I was lucky with the transition. My last stay was early August, then I did not travel until October. So I missed the worst part of the transition, that was dumb luck.

I had a bit of trouble combining my Marriott and SPG accounts, but just a bit and when I got it done everything was there and correct. I have not had any trouble with my reservations or stays. That included reservations at both brands made before the integration.

I was a Marriott Lifetime Platinum. I imagine I will be a Bonvoy Lifetime Titanium? I could not care less about the name of the program or the names of the tiers. What was leaked does strike me as pretty fair for each level.

I don't travel nearly to the degree many of you do, I generally stay around 40-60 nights per year, I was able to qualify for Platinum for many years on the back of the Marriott Rewards Visa card, which gave me 15 extra night's credit every year, plus more nights for my spend. I got to lifetime purely because I have been doing this for a long time.

For the me transition has been relatively painless. I understand that the issues have been real and serious. But the people who are responsible for the name and benefits of the program are surely NOT the same people who are responsible for the integration and the functionality of the site and the customer service issues. I wish people would start seeing that and focus on the real problems. The name of the program is surely not one of those real problems.

PHLGovFlyer

FWIW I checked into a Marriott last night and this property is still using the blue screen/character based interface (I'm tall and the agent's screen was angled upwards).

Also, IME FD agents have had access to future stay information for quite some time. Several years ago I was quizzed on upcoming stay info by a FD agent when I inadvertently left my room key and ID in the room.

KRSW

Yes, the actual people-in-the-trenches wasting money by thinking up ridiculous names are different from the people in IT who can't seem to run a website in 2018, BUT there's one common thing: leadership. Throughout this process, leadership has been lacking. Those at the top of Marriott corp are ultimately the ones to blame. From the interviews, it sounds almost like an Eddie Lampert / Iraqi Information Minister approach -- Everything's fine, nothing's wrong! I think most of us would be much more understanding if Marriott's leadership was open and honest about the current situation. As it stands now, it seems like they truly think everything's fine, which makes me wonder if they're being fed a line of bullmanure from the various departments or if they really do know just how screwed up things are.

I see a lot of comparisons to previous airline mergers, BUT I can assure you that an airline is a much different animal. FAR more moving parts & resources, along with tighter time slots to deal with. Marriott corporate doesn't have to worry about the location of resources (airplanes, ground equipment), aircraft maintenance, nor crew scheduling/duty periods/logistics or even logistics of customers & cargo. They're simply providing a reservations system with 1-day timeslots of fixed assets. The logistics/resources parts are left in the hands of the local hotels to deal with.

JBord

Of course it's different, but it's still a fair comparison. It shows that the problems people are experiencing with this merger don't affect them nearly the same way as an airline merger. Most of the gripes about Marriott are with the loyalty program, which doesn't impact your experience at a property. There are some other issues, apparently affecting a small percentage of people, with the reservation system, which simply means if you have a problem you book a different hotel and go about your life.

When I think back to the UA-CO merger, there were lost reservations, even after credit cards were charged. Refunds were taking months. Seats were being randomly changed, causing families to be separated, and people like me to be moved from an exit row to a middle seat in the last row. Mechanical issues were abundant and flights were delayed or cancelled at an all-time high rate. There were literally dozens of operational issues that affected people every day. There were issues with the loyalty program too, but those were minor compared to issues that affected people's lives in real-time like when they got to the gate with a boarding pass and were told they weren't booked on the flight.

Hotel operations are much simpler, to be sure. But the problems Marriott is having are not affecting most people, and are minor inconveniences to others. I recall one person that was HORRIFIED he had to book a room on the website rather than the app.

Marriott needs to fix it's problems, and I understand the concern that they may not truly understand them or have a plan to fix them. That's different than considering these things to be urgent issues as UA had during their merger. When all is said and done, there's no way these problems are affecting people's lives in the same way airline mergers have.

The one point you make that I agree with is leadership is at fault. There's a lack of communication and acknowledgement of the issues they have, even if it's affecting only a small population. That was exactly the same with UA, although they communicated every system issue as an "enhancement", and stayed with that line until they fixed the problem, which then became another enhancement.

Antarius

Agreed. A lot of the drama and hoopla after Aug 18th were irrelevant things like Lifetime night balances. Not critical at all.

That said, Arne seems to be banging the "everything is awesome" drum, which is at best, tone-deaf and at worst, demonstrably out of touch with reality.

bhrubin

Antarius

They may be now. But as we saw with UA-CO, a lot of High Value customers left. Arne is sounding a lot like Smisek right now, sacrificing long term gain for... honestly, not sure what.

All I am saying is, it doesn't cost Marriott a lot of money, time or effort to keep people informed. And that leads to happier customers.

magendim

That's branding 101 - Twisting or making up foreign language words into a name that is able to be trademarked. Haagen Daz is a classic example...

As far as the tier classification, anything to get rid of that confusing platinum lineup they have now. Don't know why they just didn't stick with the classic lineup that both Marriott & SPG had - Silver, Gold, Platinum and just add Ambassador for that top tier. Sometimes these marketing geniuses think too much but of course stodgy old cookie cutter Marriott doesn't seem to have the most creative brains in their corporate marketing department (Starwood was far more creative with their marketing and properties IMO)....

rny321

It's perfectly understandable that the very top tier of a hotel's guests are more interested in the upper limits of recognition and not the lower limits of status benefits. Others who spend or stay less, but still qualify for suite upgrades, might feel differently about a more explicit upgrade policy. It's not that the rest of us don't appreciate upgrades to specialty suites. It's just that we realize that we are more likely to hear the no standard suite upgrade than others who MPG believes are more valuable. Since MR's APAC policy only excluded the most costly suites, I felt that I was unlikely to be denied some form of suite when staying at one of the covered hotels. As I said before, I wish the policy had been expanded to cover the rest of the world.

C17PSGR

The issue in both legacy brands is consistency. I stayed in three Renns this month. (1) greeted me as an ambassador and offered their largest suite (it had queens so I didn't take it), (2) one greeted me as lifetime platinum and offered by a choice between the suite or a top floor with a runway view, (3) on greeted me as plat premier and said they don't upgrade to suites.

Based on the experience of others posting on FT and my own frustration with the website/app for making reservations, I expected to see problems with those performance numbers. They just weren't there. Plus, the 10Q/calls with the operators who run different brands and don't have any incentive to spin weren't seeing problems either. So Arne's comments see to be based on reality notwithstanding the experiences some are reporting on FT.

MSPeconomist

Sorry, but I view the T&C as a contract, just like airline CoCs are a contract (of adhesion). It's even more so if Marriott insists that properties aren't allowed to go above and beyond or exceed brand standards, both of which have been reported.

scubadu

Is this thread still about the possibility of Marriott re-naming their loyalty program "Bonvoy" or is this now just the new, new, "airing of grievances" thread? (I wasn't aware we had a shortage of those )

Regards

MSPeconomist

This would mean telling SPG Plat50s that they've been demoted to Gold. It's still the same 50 night level, but calling it Plat avoids that (including IIRC for the remaining PlatMinus people this year for the last time). It's far easier and less likely to cause an uproar if no one's "metal" is decreased, even if it's just a matter of perception/labeling.