DJ_Iceman

I don't have any facts, just anecdotal experience. I have certainly had a few front desk associates make comments about my high points balance or lifetime nights count, so it's either right there or easy enough for them to dig up. I once checked into a hotel I'd been staying in a lot, and a familiar associate noted that this particular stay would mark my hundredth night that year at their property; I don't know if that was obvious on his screen, or someone had noticed in advance of my stay so flagged it to pop up when I checked in.

writerguyfl

I spend over a decade working in the hospitality industry. I worked in multiple hotels as well as a chain Central Reservations call center.

I tend to pick and choose my battles when it comes to addressing what appears to be false information about how hotels and chains operate. When this thread appeared, I quickly decided it wasn't one worth responding to specific comments for two reasons.

First, in order to properly refute some of the false information, I'd need to revel proprietary information. The second reason is the quote above.

slidergirl

It's been a couple of years since I worked at a Starwood property. But, the guest comments sections were great fun to read on a slow shift! It wasn't there on Lightspeed dash, you had to know how to drill down to it. When someone enters a comment, you could designate the comment to be hotel only, brand only or global. Usually I'd put it to hotel only if a guest had an issue with something specific to the hotel. There were times where something would be only applicable to hotels within the brand that offer similar service and amenities (requesting a buckwheat pillow wouldn't be relevant to all hotels). If someone was verbally abusive to me or my staff (calling me or my staff idiots, lazy, lying, or swearing at us was a no-no for me), or it was clear that someone was "phishing for freebies", it was marked for global. I did not only put "beware" comments, I was also a "good guest" comment writer. If a guest was particularly nice or memorable, I'd make a note to that someone could maybe pay it forward and reward the guest in the future. For fun, my GS Manager and I added comments in each other's CRM - he put in mine that I was particularly fond of Brunello. I have yet to receive a welcome bottle of Brunello...

I had a CRM system when I worked at a Hilton Brand. I had a CRM system at the 2-hotel group I worked at (a Forbes 5* and a Forbes 4*). Even my condo management group has a CRM. I'm kind of shocked that some of you had no idea about these. Also, I'm shocked that some of you didn't realize we could figure out who you are and what comments you wrote on TA or other places. My first career was in software as a tester and troubleshooter. My managers were always surprised that I could match up comments with guests. It gave me something to do on slow nights!!

hyedmd

Interesting read, thanks!

kilo

For regular FTers I am not sure this is much of a revelation. After all the same thing goes on in some of FT Airline and hotel forums. I have never worked in the travel industry but whenever I read a substantial complaint on any travel forum one of the first things I think about is that it is easy for the guest / passenger to be easily identified.

The only revelation might be how much effort a company puts into finding out who made a certain (trivial) comment.

SoroSuub1

I got my package back, and it's interesting how much information I found out about account fraud and how much of the fraudster's action/information they scrubbed... However since I can see all the historical phone #'s on my account, I can see that the fraudster is an escort service in Lake Charles, LA (literally just googled the historical phone # on the account that's not mine). It is otherwise completely unremarkable as I don't make enough of a good/bad impression to get account notes.

They scrubbed the data of any calls made by the fraudster while they were pretending to be me (e.g. they must have called in at least once if they set a phone PIN on my account to lock me out?).

But notes from the amazing FDA that turned them away for one of the reservations, I can see the she did her own digging to cancel the reservation... noting that the fake address used was actually a brand new house for sale. However, the data people even scrubbed the second name on the reservation from her note though (the name I have in my own notes from when I was trying to get the fraudulent reservations cancelled)...



That was exciting. Sorta.

kauppias

when did you request your data? trying to figure out how long one has to wait

SoroSuub1

It took 31 days, but I have far fewer stays than most people here on FlyerTalk.

mileageking

Approximately how many pages?

DELee

Well, for some of us, our FT handles make it really, really difficult to figure out who we are...

David

Bravada04

Finally got mine returned with 997 pages!! Went through it very quickly and nothing juicy whatsoever .... tons of past reservations and TONS of BRG requests. Service requests are recorded which were mostly housekeeping for me. One copy of a chat message that I sent a property but nothing out of the ordinary that I could see.

margarita girl

Every one of my BRGs was in there which is probably why I went to 7000 pages.

What was your “engagement level”? I wrote them back to ask what that was and got no response.

SPN Lifer

They wouldn't provide your number, or they wouldn't explain what it meant?

margarita girl

I’m level 3. No idea what it means.

Astrophsx

How far back did your report go back? Mine only went back until late 2016.