Some candid thoughts from a director of rooms
 

I had a very interesting conversation recently with the Director of Rooms of a Starwood hotel who happened to be driving a shuttle bus. It was a long journey and so I had some time to probe for information...

He said the changeover has not been easy. Marriott brought in all new software and it’s taken ages to get people trained up on it. Their fees have gone up too. He said Sheraton would charge $7,800 a month for a hotel to be part of their system... Marriott charge $14,000! No wonder so many are leaving.

He also said something very interesting about how hotels are reimbursed when points are used. As you know from the Le Méridien NYC court case a few years back, it was revealed how Starwood would reimburse the full Average Daily Rate of a room rate once the occupancy level of the hotel hit 95%.... but Marriott don't.

He said they only reimburse the first 50% of point redeemed rooms... not ALL like Starwood.

So what does that mean? It means for big events when occupancy is high or room rates are high a director of rooms he will only stick on 50% of the rooms to be redeemed and the rest have to be cash rates!

It is not in his interest for any more than 50% of rooms to be on points as they are not getting properly recompensed.

Isn't that ridiculous?

So there is far fewer availability for members because of this rule because hotels are basically disincentivized from doing so.

He said during the changeover their system was down for an entire day and they had to use a manual carbon paper credit card receipt machine!

Yeah, it had been reported before that Marriott had ended SPG’s practice of paying a bonus on award redemptions on high occupancy nights. That was never Marriott’s business model before the merger and it wasn’t also a very profitable model for Starwood to begin with, as it incentivized properties to play shenanigans with their inventory.

I wouldn't be confident on the accuracy of his information.

I've not seen anything in the news regarding hotel fees radically changing. Plus, while hotels change flags all the time, there's nothing out of the ordinary on the current hotels changing. In many or most cases, they leave because they don't want to spend money to renovate to Marriott standards. That's particularly the case with Sheraton properties.

Among other hints of inaccuracy, I would be very surprised if many hotels are anywhere close to the 50 percent guests there on points.

But, of course, Marriott has pulled legacy Starwood properties off of Lightspeed, which had far more limitations as a property management system compared to MARSHA. I wouldn't be surprised if they had problems the first day. On the other hand, hotels hire FD folks all the time and they get up to speed with training. If that hotel is still having problems after several weeks of using the system, that indicates some weakness in management.

Perhaps there was a reason he was driving the shuttle bus ;)

MAR reimburses rack rate when occupancy gets to 90%, and the 50% comment is wrong as well.

Cheers.

Can't remember whether Marsha has that. I know it tells the hotel whether I am a repeat guest.

Personally, I'd prefer that the hotel does not have access to my previous stay history or future stay plans. Unfortunately, the future looks to be to be providing all sorts of personal information to "customize" my experience.

https://www.salesforce.com/company/n...018/04/180426/
https://siliconangle.com/2018/09/25/...nected-future/

Ahh ... got it. Sounds like the guest history info in Lightspeed may not have transitioned over to Marsha. Good news, I suppose, is that hopefully they'll know the next time you're there.

I guess that is more related to the specific hotel/staff than to the system. I just got a "Welcome back to your 5th stay at the hotel" from the GM when checking in last week. So it is not like it is impossible for them to keep track.

I also got several welcome back letters this year from the GMs even though I've never stayed at those properties before...

If this is in the US I think that it might be a metaphorical thing done by Marriott (and sometimes Hilton). The policy appears to be to always "welcome back" elite members, even if they've never been to a property before. I can see what they're shooting for, even if it's a bi weird. We can't all be George Clooney.

Europe/Asia. Havent set foot in the US since the last general elections.

It seems very unprofessional for a Director of Rooms at a hotel to unload all of this information to a hotel guest in the shuttle.

I don't know much about the financials in the hotel industry, but find it interesting that $14,000 would make a hotel leave a chain - if that is true.