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I'm guessing a former SPG person is working the new Marriott site. SPG site was incompatible with using airport codes to search for hotels in my experience. That feature was added to SPG app after the merger but now has infected the Marriott site. Always figured it was because SPG was major city focused while Marriott guests often stay in the broader region where their clients are based rather than just "downtown".

Nicholas Brown

This issue will affect my loyalty to Marriott if not fixed in the near future.

So annoying getting back search returns for properties in rural India or Romania or wherever when I type in LAX/MCO/JFK--what the actual eff are they going for? Less usability in an attempt to hide airport properties, so you'll stumble across that gem of a deal 40 miles from the airport you fly out of in 9 hours?

I'm a business traveler who needs to be able to rapidly book a hotel near an airport last-minute, and if you make that vastly more time-consuming and difficult for me, I'll simply switch to Hilton properties in the cities I frequent. I'm not exaggerating at all--being able to type in an airport code and get search returns near the actual airport is worth any small difference in price to me.

I've emailed Marriott IT and plan on calling them multiple times this week to inquire as to what their plan is for restoring airport-search functionality.

goodeats21

Welcome to Flyertalk, Nicholas Brown !

Agree with you 100%. It is getting very annoying and needs to be fixed ASAP.
Let us know if you get any info or responses.

mahasamatman

Hopefully they'll also add the ability to book more than a year out, too...

No longer (at least for me).

mikebor

Legacy doesn't work anymore. The new Marriott website sucks. Put in EWR for Newark Airport and get some rail station as well as other weird locations but no Newark Airport.

How does Arne Sorenson sign off on this garbage? It's a travesty this new website is, I miss the old one badly.

CJKatl

Just to pile on in the incredibly off chance anyone from Marriott IT looks at the site like they used to years ago...

Even when the airport code gives you the correct city, most are giving you results based on the city center rather than the airport. Your most frequent guests/travelers know the difference and whether we need a room near the airport or the city or a specific suburb and will enter the information accordingly. Apparently your non-travelers who are making the decisions don't, which should be scary to anyone at Marriott relying on these "professionals" to program a travel site. As others have pointed out, this is incredibly annoying, to the point that frequent guests will quit using your site.

FWIW, the Hyatt and IHG sites easily used airport codes when I just tried. The Hilton site had its own issues and wasn't working at all.

CJKatl

Obviously he never uses the site to make his own reservations nor do the IT people or anyone else involved in making this mistake. This reminds me of back in the eighties when Kmart and Sears used to be big (and separate) companies and you started to see them lose touch. Those shouldn't be the models Marriott aims to replicate.

joshua362

Well it appears even XP users like myself are now forced to the new site with the legacy link.

The EWR thing is a joke. For laughs, put JFK in and you can choose from the EIGHT different JFK terminals to search on - then it returns 137 choices. A box to narrow it down by distance appears briefly then disappear and then I couldn't figure out where to invoke it.

But on the brightside, as you scroll down the page, the individual picture of the hotel's exterior shot gets larger by about 10% then fades back. Wonder how many IT hours were wasted programming that ridiculous feature....

CJKatl

lotemblizej

Doesn't work for me either and I really liked using the airport codes because they are easy to type. I also get all kinds of weird results when I do use an airport code. New system is worse than the old one for me. Why would you want to make it HARDER for a customer to reserve a room rather than easier. The ease of the Marriott website, in fact, is what got me hooked as a MarriottRewards member some 20 years ago.

rylan

The new Marriott website is a f'in joke... and I can't even log in to the marriott insiders site now to post my continuing list of defects and deficiencies since it crashes.

Sent in multiple complaints about the new website via email and not a damned thing has been fixed.

Nicholas Brown

Nothing but vague, generic auto-responses from Marriott.com support e-mail.

In my most recent e-mail, I requested 10,000 bonus points for the inconvenience and time out of my day required to simply book an airport property each week, over the last few weeks.

For a typical working professional, I'm guessing the extra 15 minutes it takes to find and book an airport property is worth 5-10k points monetary equivalent. 15 minutes of my time per hotel booking is certainly worth 5-10k points equivalent of my time and attention.

What is most frustrating is the complete lack of any meaningful response or even the slightest sign that they give 1 cent what a bunch of Platinum-loyal guests are inquiring about regularly.

The disparity between the quality and attentiveness of the average Marriott property manager, and the IT/web interface/IT Customer Support leads me to wonder if they've outsourced the whole back-office/interface UI to a third-party with no direct experience in the hospitality industry. If so, that's a tragedy for all of us customers (and for Marriott shareholders).

In this day and age--your web & app UI ARE your frontline customer service staff--100%. Those interfaces are just as important as the human being you interact with when you walk up to the front desk of a property, or call the manager of a property due to an issue.

Pretty crazy that a bunch of easily-fixable web interface issues are crushing my loyalty to Marriott, completely undercutting all of the good-will I have towards the brand based on their front desk, management, and housekeeping staff.

Carpboy823

You want ~$100 worth of compensation for an extra few minutes per week over the last few weeks? Come on. Marriott can design their website however they see fit, and while I do believe the airport code problem is an oversight rather than an intended change, the mere suggestion of compensation seems laughable to me... and obviously to Marriott as well, based on the responses you've gotten from them.

mikebor

Well look at it from his point of view - he is a Platinum, maybe Lifetime Platinum and stays at least 75 nights a year(probably a lot more). Estimate the costs of all his hotel room rates and the value of his loyalty to be at that level and honestly, why not ask for 10k points?? This chain can afford it. $100 value means didly squat to this behemoth company but would be a nice gesture for a loyal member who is frustrated dealing with IT incompetence.

I think he has every right to ask and I hope he gets it.

Carpboy823

Imagine extrapolating this out to all platinum members (or really even a small fraction) - if that's the standard for compensation, then Marriott is going to pay out a lot of points. I am also LTP (and PP for the past three years) and would never consider asking for compensation for this; a simple email or tweet stating my disappointment would be the extent of it. The other poster can vote with their wallet and go elsewhere if it's that large of an inconvenience.