My wife booked a work trip coming up, but we want to use my status for the benefits/points. Whats the best way to add my number to the reservation? Do I have to change the reservation to under my name in order for my number to apply benefits?

Well, unless you're also staying with her *and* paying for the room what you ask is against the Bonvoy T&Cs so I wouldn't go talking about doing it in a public forum irrespective of the anecdotes that some people may trot out about how the "do this all the time". Your Bonvoy membership is personal to you and not a family membership. What's next? Children should also get benefits? Parents? Aunties? Close friends?

So, are you also staying *and* paying for the room? Because that's the requirement for a qualifying stay.

Ah. I will be staying in the room the entire duration of the stay. I didn't realize I also had to be paying for the room.

You can always ask the hotel nicely to grant you the elite privileges for your higher status as a courtesy. You're not entitled to it but it doesn't hurt to politely ask for a favor. I have had good luck when I ask politely for reasonable requests (e.g. comp. breakfast for 3 rather than 2 during my leisure stays, etc.). Bottomline, don't try to game the system, ask nicely and see how the property responds. You maybe pleasantly surprised.

--Jon

Unless I've somehow missed this, Marriott's pursuit of total opacity has led to a redesign of their Development site resulting in their eliminating downloads of quarterly PDFs detailing each brand and their respective portfolios and pipelines; what currently exists are general brand pages [Luxury, Premium, Select...] with each brand listed, and a link that leads to the brand's website rather than an info page as before.

Ridiculous how this company keeps winding itself tighter than Dick's hatband.

khabah

My experiences the past few days:

Needed to call Marriott Platinum Line. First have to search extensively in the App to find the phone number.

1. Call Number 1 - wait on hold for ten minutes (as a platinum), finally reach an agent… Agent asks me to “hold a moment”. I wait for 6 minutes…. Here him typing constantly the whole time. After six minutes say “hello” and he says “one moment sir”…. I wait two more minutes and then hang up.
2. Call Number 2 - Try calling again… rather than being transferred to agent after waiting, my call is “hung up” on by Marriott.

Fast forward to today… Call in….
Finally reach agent. Have a simple concern. Agent says they can’t adjust on their end, but the property can. I say, great I’ll hold while you call over to them. They inform me that I have to call and they are unable to call on my behalf to adjust the room from 1 guest to 2 guests (in a US Property, where this can be done without any additional fee typically). SPG and Hyatt are always able to call a property and place the guest on hold when necessary….

Elite benefits are nice, but frankly basic competence is good. Also, it is very hard to understand marriott agents, and the line never sounds clear. Two other big minuses.

However, they do have the footprint, and the Disney Swan/Dolphin connection, which does make them somewhat compelling, especially when you aren’t traveling enough to hit Globalist. BUT… even Discoverists get Hyatt to politely answer the phone, say their name, and assist them with basic matters, which is more than Marriott reservations offers platinums….

I'm not sure if this is a genuine question or just a vent because you had a problem with a call.
If your conclusion about Marriott being "bad" is based on issues with two calls today, that seems unfair. I'm sure people have been disconnected when calling Hyatt, and individual agents have had issues on a single call.
I've called Marriott dozens of times and have not found the disconnection rate different from other companies. At most, I guess your post could be seen as "why has Marriotts phone line gotten so bad."

I'm not a Marriott apologist by any means and find the company's customer service generally awful. But this isn't why. It's unclear what your actual issue was but the fact that "SPG" could have dealt with it differently seems both speculative and random. And Hyatt is a much much smaller company, with 1/8 the number of locations. If you had a special request, it may be more efficient for you to speak with the hotel yourself than use corporate as a go-between.