kaizen7

I'm pretty sure last time when I have proper personal ambassador, she did this, or if the destination is somewhere she is not familiar with, she will ask the hotel concierge to contact me directly.
Unfortunately, for current copy and paste agents it will be much easier for us to contact the hotel directly.


I guess since 2021 and 2022 status are pretty much free status due to extensions, I hope in 2023 (or whenever Marriott starts to enforce those elite requirements) Marriott must have the promised standard back for elites handling and their hotel services.

cbellero

I received this email today from the Ambassador team. I am really trying to find any value in what they have written....I pretty interpret out of it, "Even after 10 years of having an Ambassador we still do not know you at all. Therefore we cannot make any suggestions. We also do not want to offer you anything."

I do not recall having received such a message in the past. Have other ambassadors received such an email recently?

-------------------

"Dear [cbellero],

As a valued Marriott Bonvoy Ambassador Elite member, we couldn’t help but notice that your birthday is right around the corner!

There is no better way to celebrate a birthday than with a well-deserved trip or special staycation!

Let us help plan the details! Reply to this email, and an individual Ambassador will be there for you every step of the way to help plan something memorable. The more we get to know you, the better we can personalize this and any other upcoming trips!

However you choose to celebrate, we hope you have a wonderful birthday!

Safe travels, and thank you for your loyalty,

The Ambassador Team"

cbellero

I answered my own question further above....deathwatch got this same email back in 2021.

mileageking

Got email below for a 2023 reward reservation.

Email title: We see you booked a stay with points! Can Ambassador Service help with anything?

Hello xxx,

Congratulations! Your loyalty is paying off - we noticed you used your points for your stay at xxx. Are you celebrating anything special?

As an Ambassador Elite member, you can count on the Ambassador team for any transport, restaurant, or activity suggestions during your stay. Just reply to this email, and an individual ambassador will be at your service to help you personalise the perfect trip.

We are here to make the planning part easy so you can spend more time enjoying your stay.

Safe travels,

The Ambassador Team

khabah

Sigh - another random response that isn't tied to consistency across the tier.

Aside from my chasing the Ambassador team down with queries related to my thankfully now-resolved lifetime status, I never received any proactive messages from them related to a birthday, event, why I haven't stayed with Marriott since November 2020 or anything. I made a points reservation this week, my first with Marriott in over a year and received nothing from them; instead, I sent the generic service email address a message with some requests regarding my stay and feedback around my disastrous online experience trying to book said stay. Credit to them, I received a surprisingly prompt response - nothing more than apologies for the bad IT issues and a promise to let the relevant teams know, as well as their looking into what they can do for my upcoming stay - but that's it. "Sorry you had a bad experience."

I look at it as nothing more than a tarted-up way of otherwise writing directly into a customer service line or to a hotel and letting them know how you feel or what you want. In my experience, the Ambassador service isn't proactive or anticipatory, nor does it truly impart a sense of value for the time and money it demands. A point of differentiation is this: I'm also a Hilton Diamond, and despite not having stayed with Hilton since late 2020, made a reservation for opening day at a luxury-level hotel in March 2022 months ago. I recently noticed that the hotel moved its opening to September, but my reservation was still in place for March, so I called the Diamond line. I explained my situation to the agent, who called the hotel, confirmed that the hotel did in fact move its opening, proactively offered to move my reservation to the right date at the same rate [incidentally lower than the new rate] and even offered me a generous points gift for the inconvenience. Again, this is a chain I've spent NOWHERE NEAR as much time or money as I have with Marriott, yet the service interaction I had was pleasant, informed, proactive and rewarding. I'm not naďve enough to believe the grass is always greener, but the evidence I've collected in the interactions I've had with hospitality companies other than Marriott have left me with a far greater sense of engagement and value than Marriott's sham Ambassador tier.

khabah

lost_in_translation

The value in Ambassador is in the (increasingly few) hotels that recognise someone that has spent over $20K just at Marriott hotels is probably someone you want to try to encourage to return to your hotel. I rate the official centrally provided Marriott benefits at basically zero value above Titanium. You need to find the right hotels otherwise I can’t recommend anyone spend anything extra to obtain Ambassador.

cubeman

They should just kill the Ambassador status or make it $50k spend and make it a Marriott dedicated centurion-esc service.

goodeats21

I have no confidence Marriott would execute any type of enhanced service level for any proposed level of spend.

They seem to have no sway over how properties (franchises) treat high level elites, other then the published breakfast benefit type stuff...and even then it is far from consistent application.
Ambassador is a joke. Centurion-esque would just be a bigger joke.

HaleiwaFlyer

The sad part is that Marriott can make the Ambassador qualification spend higher than the current 20k, keep the service level the same, and people will still chase after it. This does not pertain to organic spenders. The gamification of elite status and/or fear of missing out is real. The spend threshold is not the issue, it is Marriott marketing an elite status that aren't meeting people's expectation in the US properties. However, Marriott has no incentive to spend more money on the Ambassador status or make it better; as Flyertalk people said, they are footprint captive, and Marriott has a huge footprint.

For example, my only request for my ambassador was to have them communicate with the hotel, to have a bottle of champagne in the room for New Years Eve. I will even add that I told them I will purchase the bottle of their choosing through the hotel, and not a comped one. Nope, a big fail on their part, and no champagne in the room. That was pretty much the end of going after Ambassador status for me; as I expected a higher level of service from the Ambassador team. I really wish they changed their mission statement or future vision for the Ambassador team, but based on the limited anecdotal experiences here, I doubt it.

MacW

Giving up on Bon Voy. I have had ambassador level for a few years. The straw that broke the camel’s back was this weekend. I had a flight cancelled and was stuck late at night in a Colorado mountain town. I called the ambassador line and was routed to a call center overseas to an agent that obviously had no idea where I was, what the options were, etc. When I asked for a supervisor - none available. When I asked for booking help for somewhere to stay for the night — system was down for maintenance, so I would have to go on the app and look myself. Ambassador is basically a bad breakfast credit these days.

Have other people given up on Marriott yet? Where have other people shifted and liked the service better? Hyatt? Hilton?

xooz

I completely misinterpreted the meaning of the thread title.

Marriott Bonvoy Lurker II

Dear MacW,

We are sorry for the inconvenience and disappointment that has resulted from your experience. If you can send a private message or email to us with your Marriott Bonvoy member number, full name and contact information, we will share your feedback with our Ambassador team for further review.

Please feel free to contact us if we can be of any assistance.

Best regards,

Carrie L
Specialist Social Media
Marriott International
[email protected]

mciampa

Maybe my expectations are low -- perhaps partially because of this thread -- but as a new Ambassador, my experience has so far been pretty good. I just became Ambassador in December and I've been able to utilize the Ambassador service to do the following (entirely via email):

(1) I booked a hotel room in St. Louis at my corporate rate. The corporate rate saves about $200 off the regular room but it's for a baseball trip with a buddy and the corporate room is only one king bed. I asked the ambassador to see if it was possible to change the king bed to two queens. Within less than 12 hours, it was done.

(2) I booked a stay at the Cosmopolitan Hotel (two rooms). I asked if it was possible to get a suite for my room. I also asked if I could invoke Your24 to check in at 10 AM and asked if they could book a reservation for me at this restaurant that only accepts phone reservations and often doesn't pick up the phone (I went there before about 3 years ago). I got suite upgraded for both rooms with mine overlooking the fountains, I got denied Your24 because they said the hotel doesn't participate in that (but was able to check in at that time anyway as my room was ready when I arrived) and they set up the reservation. They called me a couple of times to try and lock down the reservation time.

(3) I had a stay in Philadelphia last weekend where I had two rooms at the Downtown Marriott. My daughter is three years old and we were going with a family friend who have a daughter the same age. I asked the Ambassador if it would be possible to get joining rooms, explaining the circumstance. When we got there we found not only joining rooms but one of the rooms was a suite so it was a great weekend.

(4) I have two points stays booked this summer, St. Regis Florence and Hotel Excelsior in Milan. Both hotels would only allow me to book with points if I had two guests, not three. We'd be going with my three-year-old daughter as well though. I asked the ambassador to check with both hotels if this was okay and after a couple of days they came back to me and said yes so long as she used the same bed as us (which she would). I would have had to pay 375 euros in Milan and 575 in Florence otherwise to add the extra person.

So overall for me, Ambassador has been worth it a couple months in. I hope that it will help me redeem some SNAs that I have queued up for Hawaii in May and Europe in the summer but I also understand that it could be a busy travel season as people try to do what they can before the next variant or whatever not to mention pent up demand for travel. I also think it'll be useful in Europe for restaurant reservations. The $14K last year was a real sweet spot for me and not sure I'll ever be able to get to $20K so I'm going to try and enjoy this year as Ambassador. So far, so good.

kennycrudup

So, how long does it take for Ambassadors to reply to your E-mail? I sent one around 8:30 this morning (PST) and it's been over 9 hours and I haven't received so much as a "We've received your message" E-mail back (nor any bounces or SPAM). This is the first time I've tried to use my AMB benefits since earning it around this time last year (and I just want them to check on something for me) and so far, things have been pretty much the lowered-expectations experience that FT has led me to expect 😐

kennycrudup

The problem I've found is such hotels have so many people who do spend that kind of $$ they don't seem to care if one or two AMBs fall thru the cracks. On one of my stays at this FL hotel I spend most of my time the FDC told me there were 10 other AMBs there already checked in; they don't even bother to give me the brown bag with the chocolate and water anymore.