Incorrect Online Booking Inventory?
 

I just checked into a FSM for a two night stay. When I arrived in the lobby, I took a moment to check online to see if higher-level rooms were available. In the booking engine it showed concierge level guest rooms, executive king rooms and one bedroom king concierge access rooms available for both nights of my stay. Great! So I approached the desk, showed my ID and inquired about an upgrade. To my surprise, the desk clerk stated that there were none available and placed me on a non-concierge floor though he did mention the that I had lounge access (though it was closed on the weekend but that's another thread). I didn't feel like being confrontational so i took my key and went to my room.

The room was pretty average. Once I got settled in, I dropped a note to marriott.com asking them why upgrades would not be granted, despite those room types showing as bookable. About four hours later, I get a call from the hotel manager on duty. She stated that the information online was wrong and that she would need to speak to her inventory control person.

Has anyone ever heard of this happening? In 2011, one would think this process would be completely automated and updated in real-time. What if someone went online and booked those rooms only to find they actually weren't available? Frankly, I find the manager's explanation to be BS but I'm interested in my fellow FTers experiences.

perhaps that is because they may not have been vacant clean? Also sometimes the hotel forgets to close out the system online if they are overbooked or sold out of a certain room type. It has been known to happen.

From Experience
 

Speaking from experience at working at a Marriott previously... inventory is NOT automatically closed off and a person typically will do this. If it is a smaller hotel or a very busy hotel that has the person doing multiple duties, they oftentimes get side tracked and don't have time to do this. Ancient system, I know, but have you ever gotten a chance to peek on the other side of the counter? It is not Windows 7/Mac OSX... it literally looks like a DOS screen for full service for most hotels in the states and something barely better for limited service.

technically this is correct...but the system does correctly account for sold/occupied inventory of each room type (yes it's very easy for a hotel to screw it up though too)....while there are situations that would prevent the entire "house" from being cleaned on a given day it is against SOP for all hotel companies and should be an extremely rare situation.....

(FYI - the days of direct MARSHA access are coming to a close....think Hilton R&I type system which is just as complex)

Despite the fact that I really like Marriott, I think the more likely answer (and yes, I have had this situation happen to me) is that the people at the property are simply lying. I don't know why some properties hoard their premium rooms like precious commodities, but a couple of times this has happened to me and I firmly stood my ground, and magically they were able to free up one of the "unavailable" rooms for me...

deleted, company policy

both MARSHA and Holidex are based upon the same system and look/act/feel very much alike (they are both based upon EA's reservation system)......personally I'd like to see a blend between HilSTAR (HCRS) and MARSHA....dont care much for the limitations of PCRS (Promus CRS) and suprised Hilton has kept it running all of these years but then each year it does get a little closer to HCRS