CJKatl

Went into the Marriott site this morning and they have somehow made it less easy to use, more gimmicky and just plain worse.

We no longer have the information about our accounts in a box in the top right corner of the screen. It's now on one of those annoying moving boxes. After you log in, it tucks itself under the reservation window.

One can only believe there is a blind Marriott relative who is being given the task to create and update the site. Anyone other than a relative would have been let go several updates ago and anyone with sight would know how truly awful the site has become.

You can just imagine the computer folk presenting the site to executives. I'd imagine those computer people gushed while talking about the site, but didn't use the word "customer" once. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. Seriously, Marriott, get customer input and put the brakes on your computer people, who are running amok.

I thought the previous update would be a little jarring at first, but that I'd get used to it. It's been six months and every time I go into the site my first thought is the previous site was better.

Thank you for the opporunity to vent. I did put a comment on the site towards the end of last week, before this new awfulness was rolled out.

muirhejsff

I have 5 little boxes now when I go to their website:

• Megabonus
• Spring Break Savings
• Save on Vacations
• Search
• Marriott Rewards Login

To me, the way it's presented means that each of these boxes is represented as an equivalent function, with the boxes in the foreground being the most important, the ones in the back least. Obviously this isn't true- the basic Search function and the Marriott Rewards Login open up the deeper portions of the site, where as the other ones are basically ads.

I wonder what type of human computer interaction / usability studies they do on this stuff!

Speaking of website design flaws, it also really drives me nuts once logged in, my Rewards # is buried behind additional links!

- John

Minneapolis

This is so so so annoying. How do they continually keep ruining this website? It's the not just fact that it changed, most times change is good, but they are just slowly ruining it with stupid quirks like this. Death by 1000 cuts.

CJKatl

Additional Rant:

The "Missing Stay Request" for link is gone. I sent an email to the administrator, and received one back directing me to where the link used to be. Of course, nobody bothered to check, despite my having told them that the link is gone. The link is still gone.

Typically that these people only think in terms of how they think the site should work, rather than looking to see how it actually works and experiencing that through a customer perspective. Instead, they've wasted my time and irked a customer.

aaupgrade

ENHANCEMENTS

I love it. NOT!

I sign into the "My Account" floating window and when it refreshes the page it moves all the "My Account" floating window to the background again. Uh, stupid. A 6th grader would know that if I was signing into "My Account" I would want to access the functionality of the "My Account" floating window.

Then I go click on the "My Account" floating window again, and then I have to click on Rewards Account Activity, and then I have to click on View Rewards Activity. So a total of 4 mouse clicks to get to My Account information. What moron came up with this time waster.

Go back to the original Marriott Home page which had NO FLOATING WINDOWS!!! You clicked on Account Activity, signed in and all of your info was there. ONE MOUSE CLICK!

Marriott IT, what do you not understand about user friendly? ONE MOUSE CLICK!

Do you understand yet... ONE MOUSE CLICK!

Marriott is living up to its well earned reputation of enhancements being unintuitive and dysfunctional.

But once again it looks pretty. THAT IS NOT, I REPEAT NOT, A COMPLIMENT.

lkar

It is so horrible and it just gets worse. I stay maybe 15 nights a year so don't really have to worry about too much organizing, but for those of you with platinum level stay and reward activity, I don't know how you put up with it. The old web site was fine.

SkiAdcock

I thought MarriottConcierge said last autumn that the IT department was going to switch it back to what it used to be. Obviously that hasn't happened & it's 4 months later.

Cheers.

aaupgrade

You have to be more specific with Marriott reading this. They will think you mean the one from last week. Which old web site?

They need to go back to the one from 2 years ago before they added the resource hog, floating window crap to their home page. Back when you could choose to deduct points for your award stays or not.

dcline414

I can survive this latest version of the site, but surely Marriott wasn't going for "barely survivable" when they paid someone to design the site.

If they want to keep this god-awful version, they at least need to offer a basic (html only) version for slow connections and the rest of us that would rather use a dated site than a fancy one that is flawed beyond all imagination.

dw

Not only is it less functional now, but it's also rather unsightly to have that giant gray box with just our account information links floating around. I'm not sure what the justification was for this change, but it certainly couldn't have been for utility or aesthetics!

rthib

They should force the site designer to try and use the site from one of the hotels.
At those speeds it is almost impossible to use.

PHLGovFlyer

This is like a recurring nightmare with these fools.

Why on earth are they spending time and money adding useless moving box fluff to the site when they should be getting back to basic functionality like they had 18 months ago?!?!?!?!?

muirhejsff

So, we can certainly go on and on about the shortcomings of Marriott's website. It does bring up 2 questions in my mind-

1) Do the right people know that it's very likely costing them business?

2) What is the best medium to communicate back to Marriott that very loyal customers demand something better?

AA Novice

They finally made it worse than the HHonors website. I would have bet money that wasn't possible but I was wrong.

SkiAdcock

No kidding! I used to brag about how Marriott's website was so much better than Hilton. Not any more.

Cheers.