rucksack

Good point. Although, it will hardly matter by March when hotels can set their award prices to whatever they want.

(And this is yet another example of how stingy Marriott is. Hyatt and even Hilton both don't charge resort fees on points stays.)

seat38a

Maybe because you'r not in the US? Can't speak for what people see outside of what I see in my home country's version of the site.

seat38a

Regarding the scam fee and taxes, I really don't care if it is charged or not as long as I'm shown the all in price. What I care about is the total price not what the breakdown is. When I book a flight on United, I could care less how much of the price I paid is taxes or whatever. I agree with the $175 dollars price between SNA - SFO so I book it. I could care less about the line item breakdown.

rucksack

Well, you should care slightly because you don’t earn points on junk fees.

seat38a

As someone who pays cash for 99% of my stays and rarely use my points, not really. I care about my status renewal which has nothing to do with points. With United, I see upfront how many PQP I'm earning when I'm booking so really don't care how it breaks down. And TBH, with United, since I'm buying FC or Polaris anyways, status doesn't affect me really at all. And at a minimum, I'm getting silver automatically via Marriott for being Titanium. Also, since I have the United Club CC, even if I didn't have Silver status, I would be getting pretty much most of the benefits of silver anyways.

rucksack

If you're a "WFBF" (Want First, Buy First) kind of person that doesn't care much about points, I'd humbly suggest that you'd be better served not caring about hotel loyalty and just booking whatever is most convenient / best suited to your tastes in any given situation.

seat38a

Last I checked, loyalty programs were NOT all about points. You know, the status part of the program. The status that has given me late checkouts and upgrades to presidential suites without using my suite night awards or the early check-in for no cost when United drops me into town at 7AM. The free drinks, free breakfast and food that has saved me easily 2 grand in food and drinks for 3 people for the 2 weeks while road tripping through Europe. Oh and the courtesy 7PM late checkout offered to me in Santiago Chile for being a Titanium, since checkin at the airport doesn't open till 8pm.

More times than not, I've paid for the cheapest room available and was given something that would have cost me more if I had to book it directly. Unless it was an early checkin situation, I've never been given a crappy room for which they've always warned me ahead of time.

WasKnown

Loyalty programs have two major components: reward (points) and recognition (status). Many people on this site fail to understand that these aspects are cultivated and managed by hotel companies distinctly. Although they are often intertwined, they are far from being the same thing.

rucksack

My point was that Marriott does a pretty poor job in that second component (recognizing status), and so if someone doesn’t care about the reward component, they could get excellent service and exactly what they want every time by just paying for it.

I find it interesting that someone would care about value-oriented things like free breakfast and free upgrades but not points…

WasKnown

Different people care about different things. Just because you care about both doesn’t mean that everyone will. Some people (ie many on this site) value hotel breakfasts highly and others simply do not. Clearly the recognition aspect is satisfactory for OP and that is what drives their loyalty. I know people with millions of airline miles that just can’t be bothered to learn how to redeem them. Such is life.

GUWonder

What a digression from the topic in order to pontificate about things irrelevant to this topic and divert attention from things more core to the topic: the scam fees that Marriott has been benefitting from along with its affiliated properties that play the “mandatory” scam fee scheme.

Putting aside all this digression to get back on topic, where is the evidence that Marriott and the the big OTAs aren’t playing from the same classic PR/lobbying playbook of deploying money and foot soldiers to oppose meaningful, customer-friendly reforms while in the shadows and yet in public claiming to support customer-friendly reforms when it comes to these hotel scam fees? Some of us aren’t new to this game that companies play and pay to play while talking themselves up as “one of the good guys”.

WasKnown

Again, one of THE goliaths of OTAs (if not the Goliath) literally de-ranks hotels with resort fees in their search. Pretty clear objective there lol. This has been posted multiple times and you have yet to address it.

GUWonder

Already addressed. De minimis public posturing is not the same thing as actually siding with customer-friendly legal/regulatory reform/pushes in this area.

WasKnown

It’s not public posturing lol. It is something that directly impacts their business and the business of hotels with resort fees. This is the definition of direct action lol. Expedia has no reason to want fees that they don’t make a commission on.

GUWonder

That’s not direct action to support legal/regulatory reforms to ban these hotel scam fees.