do you think the lowly worm manning the front desk is doing this because he has seething contempt for his economic betters or because his job depends on it?

That sounds great in the abstract, but it must be very difficult to deal with life on a day-to-day basis.

I would estimate I get lied to by front desk agents about a quarter of the time, either about the quality of the room initially assigned or the availability of better rooms. I generally attribute no malice. I find it more productive to focus on getting them to assign me a better room than proclaiming moral high ground.

The problem is that "dishonest conduct" is encouraged (or even mandated) by the management, and as brand owner, Marriott choose to be silent about it.

Thats why we have these lame excuses about room/suites being available but its not available in the same time.

So how about that AI?

The things I've noticed that often causes delays is not knowing for sure which rooms have had the housekeeping cleaning finished up. I especially notice that when I request a room on particular floor, even when it's not a special type of room.

If they can automate the input from housekeepers and/or an analysis of the room condition, to help determine when a room is truly ready for a guest, that could speed it up.

Just noticed the same thing for a check-in at the San Gabriel, CA Sheraton for this coming Saturday. This evening, two days before arrival, my room category has been changed from base King to Club Level King. The AI room assignment is supposed to occur 24 hours before check-in, so it looks like this property is still manually pre-blocking rooms.

I'm in favour of anything that speeds up the check-in process. I still don't understand why at a lot of properties where I've done the Mobile Check-in and am a regular guest that there is so much tapping required and it takes so long you'd think I was buying the hotel.

The lengthy check-in process does provide opportunity to establish rapport with the front desk clerk, which may enhance upgrade opportunities. :idea:

As a charming chap I would tend to agree with you, however I'm reluctant to interrupt all the tapping with witty repartee lest the process be extended further.

Here’s another data point of a property perhaps not relying on the new algorithm and still manually assigning rooms.

Le Méridien Seoul- I was upgraded from a standard room to a club room (and at this property, the club rooms actually are different), but it was done the morning of arrival, not 24 hours prior to check-in when the algorithm is supposed to assign rooms.

Did 6 stays after the AI master supposedly take over the Bonvoyworld :D

Never got any upgraded email that supposedly come at h-1
Got 2 NUA refusal emails though.

Seems like those hotels still manually assigning upgrades.

I have a bunch of stays and have seen no evidence that anything has changed.

Instead of AI assigning a room, can’t Marriott finally allow us to pick our own rooms at check-in, like Hilton? The AI could decide to open up additional (better) rooms but I can still select away from the ice machines, etc.

If Marriott allowed you to pick your own rooms at check-in, you might only have a subset of available rooms to choose from.

That's because Marriott, in my experience, doesn't have good quick systems for confirming that a room has finished cleaning and is ready for occupancy. Until they implement something like that, only those rooms they know for sure have finished cleaning, which is sometimes only a small subset of them, would be available to you, and then people would complain that their own choosing of rooms was not letting them choose a room that a friend was later able to get without choosing their own room, and waiting for the front desk to find out if a room of a particular type was done being cleaned and was ready for check-in.

This is a valid point. How many times at check-in has the FD associate had to get on a walkie-talkie to track down the "housekeeping supervisor" to get the current status of a room? The lack of that information makes room selection difficult to say the least. For some reason Hilton has it figured out.