feobrien

I just had a very strange call with a service representative. I booked the Brussels Airport Sheraton via our corporate travel website (Concur). For some reason the reservation does not have my loyalty number attached, been having this problem with Marriott, think it has to be a subtle mismatch in name. No problem, in the past I have simply called Marriott/Starwood and they would add my loyalty number to the reservation. I called today and I was told they could no longer do that, I had to wait until I checked into the hotel. I told them that was unfortunate since the hotel would not know my status until I arrived and hence not provide any of the benefits. So they offered to send an email to the hotel to add the loyalty number. If this was not odd enough, I was then told that I wouldn't receive any points as the reservation was booked through a third party (my corporate travel via Concur). To receive points you have to book through the app or their website. I pointed out to the representative that this couldn't be true or you would be impacting virtually all of your corporate travel customers. I was informed that she checked with one of her colleagues and that she was correct. Has anyone heard of this? If this is true, I'll just book all of my hotels with Hilton and Hyatt who don't have such an incredibly bad policy.

C17PSGR

I suspect its a mistake and the rep didn't understand that Concur is something very different from Expedia/hotels.com/etc. I don't use concur to book reservations but I suspect you'd see some serious screaming here if this info is accurate. My recollection from other posters is that it may depend on the your corporate travel policy as well.

ethernal

Some specially negotiated corporate rates do exclude elite benefits but this is rare. Is this a hotel that your company has a special rate with? If it is just a generic corporate rate it dose seem odd.

EuropeanPete

feobrien

Yes, it is the generic corporate rate (and we are a large corporate customer >70,000 employees) code for Marriott.

feobrien

Yes, that is what I thought, until she told me she discussed it with her colleague.

cycyc

When you made the reservation did you make sure you used your corporate rate? I've noticed that some of the rates offered in Concur are through third party sites like Booking.com in addition to the corporate rate offered. Sometimes the Booking.com rate is actually cheaper than the corp rate, so it might be easy to accidentally click on that instead.

CO-PLAT

SkiAdcock

This might be it. I've heard it happen to a few folk, where they're booking through Concur but it shows as Expedia & booking.com at the hotel level. So guess the thing is to double-check before clicking.

Cheers.

feobrien

Interesting thought. I did just look and it shows our corporate code number as the rate. So at least for me that's not the problem.

myperks

TBD

Sure this will fix itself once more companies book via booking.com on Concur. The whole point of these programs is to influence business travelers, which obviously can't really happen in this case.

C17PSGR

And ... the point of a corporate travel policy is to control costs.

My impression is that concur is a portal, not an OTA, but that as a portal it can be configured to book directly with Marriott or through booking.com/expedia

TBD

That's not correct. Concur is an online booking tool that pulls inventory from the GDS. It can also be configured (as of recently) to pull non-GDS content from sources like booking.com, HRS, etc. Marriott cannot currently offer content directly to Concur (nor does Hilton, etc).

Any my point was: Hotels will always want to influence travelers. If a large number of corporate bookings come via booking.com, then the hotels will need to adjust their tactics to continue influencing travelers.

C17PSGR

Like I said, its a portal, not an OTA.

But, I'll accept its booking through the GDS rather than from Marriott.com but that some companies are having it configured to pull through other sources. Of course, Marriott promotes that it is always lower than those other sources .....