Marriott LNF and Ctrip.com
 

I tried to search the forums for this particular question but I was not able to find anything. Does anybody have any experience making LNF claims against ctrip rates?

I tried to recently and received the following response:

According to the Terms and Conditions of Marriott's Look No Further(SM) Best Rate Guarantee, a comparison rate must be reservable by the general public and be verifiable by Marriott. According to our review of the site with which your comparison was made, reservations are not confirmed to guests at the time of the initial transaction. We are unable to verify your comparison as reservation requests made via this source are considered in the following manner:

http://pages.english.ctrip.com/webho.../hotel.html#04

For this reason, we must deny your claim under the terms of Marriott's Look No Further(SM) Best Rate Guarantee program.

I suppose this counts against their T&C. However, can ctrip be classified as a travel agent? I called into the LNF desk and they seemed to imply they couldn't be, although I did not understand their explanation behind it. The reason I'm wondering about the travel agency part is because the following is outlined in their FAQ:

My travel agent quoted me a lower Marriott rate than the rate I reserved on Marriott.com.

Rates quoted by travel agents are eligible for Marriott's Look No Further Best Rate Guarantee. We require that you present two reservation numbers with your claim: one for the reservation made through Marriott.com, and one for the reservation made through the travel agency. Marriott will cancel the higher rate reservation at no charge to you and honor our guarantee on the lower rate, as well as adjust it by 25%.

in reading the T&Cs of the ctrip cited to it is obvious that ctrip is not verifiable by the LNF team as reservations are not confirmed to guests at the time of the initial transaction..........IMO, they therefore properly denied your claim.........

Understood, but what about the travel agent part? What qualifies as a travel agent? I understand that they can't since the bookings aren't verified immediately, it's not a comparable transaction. However, you could compare ctrip to an agency. Are you aware of anywhere that details what they define as a 'travel agency'?

FYI, Ctrip bills itself as an online travel agency, so in a way it's business model is not really that similar to an expedia.com or hotels.com as far as I am aware of. That's why all bookings are manually placed and later confirmed by their agents once you place an online order.

in ALL previous dealings with Travel Agents they can IMMEDIATELY confirm a booking while ctrip cannot so I would NOT consider ctrip equivalent to a Travel Agency no matter how they tout themselves.......

Ok, I wasn't aware that Travel Agents immediately confirm booking. If that's the case, then I'm sure this line of thought isn't going to go anywhere with them.

If anybody else has anecdotal evidence of this working or not working with Ctrip, I would still appreciate hearing it.

It's unfortunate because ctrip is consistently cheaper for most hotels in China, but you don't get points/stay credits when you book through them. I'll just have to balance if the rate difference is worth the points.

you might not get MR points/stay credits but you still get ctrip points .......
http://news.marriott.com/2012/07/mar...rtnership.html

and ctrip offers a better LNF program then Marriott!

I'll check it out. I actually have 75,000 ctrip points that i've never bothered to try to redeem. I'll have to take a look at how valuable they are compared to Marriott.

I already have Marriott Gold due to their partnership with United, so I don't really need the nights credits. However, I was thinking the points would be valuable to redeem for vacation travel outside of China. Pretty new to the hotel points game so I'm still trying to figure things out.

Thanks again for your help!