As someone who has begun to book Marriott hotels coming from SPG, I was really surprised that Marriott thinks this is acceptable behavior. Marriott has scored an own goal with me, as I'll quickly check all hotels in a city on SPG.com and Hilton.com, but seeing as the Marriott.com rates aren't actually reliable I just don't consider Marriott properties in these situations. It's clearly unusable and can only possibly be of value to Marriott as a way of tricking people.

I fully agree while they are not lying it certainly makes it tricky and does not build up trust. I think misleading is certainly a fair term. While I do look at Marriott.com for rates from time to time it is by far the least friendly site of the main hotel brands to get an idea of the rate, unless you are booking 1 night only! If they change Spg to work like this it will be a disaster and certainly loose some of my bookings as I cannot be bothered clicking into all the various hotels in a city to see the rate I will be paying.

I despise how they quote the price when I am looking for a BRG/LNF rate. Much prefer the way SPG quotes average rate.

Agree. The service provides measleding information most of the time. To find out the real price, I had to read all the fine print.

Just to clarify, from the OP's post, it appears that the Marriott website displays the first night rather than the lowest, highest, or average night. Is this what always happens?

Yes. No. Depends. Marriott has made it extra cluttered...

When you make a reservation on the website, you enter your dates, etc., and get a list of available hotels with room rates. The taxes and fees do not show on that page. What will be shown on that page is the first night's rate and the total for all nights without any explanation. So it can show a room rate of $100/night but in much smaller font it shows a four day total of $750. If you click to choose a rate you will be taken to a page that only shows the average rate per night. On that second page you will see the total room charges including taxes. If you click for the Summary of Charges you will see the individual nights.

Because you see different numbers on the two pages it is very difficult to check that the rate is consistent. You would need a calculator and would have to do algebra. It's needlessly confusing and makes you think Marriott is purposely trying to hide something. It's not what you would expect from an honest company. I cannot help but think this would not happen if Mr. Marriott were still running the company and he should personally be ashamed that people are doing this under his name. Maybe I'm wrong to have thought he had integrity, but what is being shown on the website now is inexcusable. It was not designed to benefit a consumer.

End of rant....

Also makes it difficult to sort by price because the first 3-4 results can have a much higher price overall. And when you are looking at multiple hotels they do not display the total on the front page - you have to click into each hotel. But then again, every site has its quirks, like SPG won't let me search AAA rates from the initial search page on web, but I can do it from the app...

This problem is sometimes so bad that I have to make 3 or 4 reservations for an otherwise continuous stay to flip between different rates where a corporate rate makes more sense on weekdays and an AAA or other deal rate makes sense on weekends.

I admit this is not a display issue, but I just wish it was easier to see the daily rate earlier in the search process.

Rasheed

IMO Hilton's site is by far the best in this regard. It gives the average rate and allows me to search for multiple rates at once. The SPG grid is nice, but I wish I could pick the rates I wanted to see at the start, rather than editing them after. I would like to see someone come up with a search that shows refundable rates only, so I don't get fooled when some hotels are prepay and save and others are not.

I'm not sure if Marriott is trying to deceive anyone with the way they do this or it's just the system being built one way and no one ever doing any user testing to realize what they're doing.

I say it's probably not the former because often times they'll display a room cost that is super high but it's just for one night of your booking while the other nights are half that price. So you could be booking a 3 night stay and the search page will say "$300/night" and then the total will be $500 since the first night is $300 and the other two are $100.

Like others have mentioned it needs to be an average rate and they should include taxes/fees.

Yeah, I think it's just a lack of awareness rather than conscious maliciousness.

For only showing the first night, yes. For not showing taxes/fee, I have my doubts.

Well it kind of depends. I find the SPG website and - especially - the App to be super annoying in the number of rates you must scroll through, particularly if you don't want a prepaid rate. Marriott's display is usually much clearer and quicker in that respect.

But if you're booking Marriott for multiple nights, you often do have to go through an extra step to find out what the room really costs.

I have also noticed that my SPG confirmation emails don't include the total (over all nights, net of taxes/fees/etc) currently, where they formerly did in the 'Your Rate' section. I book through a special portal, so I am not sure if it's some sort of particular glitch, but it makes things more difficult to manage when I am working out logistics of changes.

Not really liking some aspects of this Marriott acquisition.

Not even close, considering it's completely impossible to search for multiple discount codes at the same time on marriott.com. I have to run at least three individual searches on marriott.com to do what I can do in one search on spg.com.

The only site I've used that's weaker than marriott.com is fairmont.com.