Seems you missed the "it kind of depends" in my post.

For my purposes the Marriott website and app (especially) are much more user friendly than SPG's. But I'm not searching for "multiple discount codes." YMMV.

Agree the SPG app is annoying and could be much better at how it displays rates / rooms. The website compared to Marriott however is leagues ahead!

What annoys me about SPG site is that when you bring up another SPG hotel's web page, while it does retain the date selection, it doesn't retain the rate selections from the previous SPG hotel web page. I check rates daily on about on 30-40 stays and have saved links to each hotel's home page to more easily facilitate this effort.

With Marriott it retains the date and rate selection, but with SPG I have to deselect SPG Free Nights and SPG Cash & Points and select Automobile Association and Senior for each and every hotel. When searching with Marriott, only when doing the initial booking do I have to look at both AAA and Senior to find the best rate, subsequent price checking I only search on what I already know is the lowest rate (usually Senior); however, I do glance at package rates when I see a low one on the tab and let's say I'm searching on Senior which is usually the case, then every couple weeks I also check the AAA to see if any lower rates have appeared.

Now with all that said, the new Marriott web site is still not as good as the legacy site it replaced as it requires many more mouse clicks, however it does appear to be more stable than it was over the past 7 months since it appeared in September of last year. There seems to be a lot of complaining about each others web site and in the case of this thread pricing. Actually I don't have much nice to say about Marriott's new web site, but in the case of pricing I actually feel that on the new web site pricing is more transparent. It displays the first nights rate (once you understand and accept that, it is easier) and the total excluding taxes (the legacy Marriott web site only listed the first night's rate, no total). For those of us that didn't rely on calculators when growing up it is easy to divide the pre-tax total in our head and get a nightly average; and for those that don't wish to do the math then once you click on a rate and go to the next page there is a down arrow next to the word Summary which will display each night's rate and the total including taxes.

Anything new, SPG or Marriott web site, takes time for us to adapt and learn the ins and outs. While I did complain about SPG in the first paragraph, I have learned to use it and while annoying for my extensive daily use it is quite a minor inconvenience compared to many of other life's challenges. I'll survive.

It is very difficult to follow-and frustrating to think you have found something only to see a whopper price a few nights into your stay. I see similar (though different process) with airlines. If one seat is left in a fare bucket, but I need two seats, I don't get one seat from the lower bucket-they are both in the higher bucket. That's why I price one seat on every flight first as a cost basis. Then go from there.

My biggest gripe is that you have to be careful to not select the prepaid rate. Sometimes it's the default when searching without a code, so you have to watch out.

Glad the OP brought this up. There have been a few times that I've said to my wife, "I think we'll stay at XX hotel. The price is $YYY/night," only to follow up with "Never mind. The first night was that price...the rest of the nights are $100+ higher." I suppose I'll eventually get used to not believing the initial rate I see, but whether by design or due to poor execution, it feels a little bit unfriendly.

I'll also echo what others have said about the ability to look at multiple rates at once. Only allowing one at a time feels like they don't want me to find the best price. I like that SPG lets me choose multiple rates, but wish I could save my preferred rate plans into my profile so they always show up when I'm logged in. Despite this flaw, it feels infinitely more consumer friendly than one rate at a time.

While I'm making my wish list...it would also be nice if Marriott would include unavailable (booked up for my nights/not yet open)properties in my search results. When they don't show up for particular dates, I may never know the property even exists.

And speed up the app too. What's with the M logo heartbeat that lasts for 10 seconds?

the worst part is those rates don't show those Urban fee which so many hotels are charging now. You expect it at a resort in today's world, but a downtown hotel in Denver?

I thought it was deceiving, but for another reason: taxes and mandatory fees (resort fees and "destination fees") aren't included in that total. I can see an argument for not including taxes, as those are generally the same within the same city. But the mandatory fees do vary, and I hate that hotels that charge them get an advantage in search results because their rate is shown as lower than it truly is. I understand un-bundling, even though I don't always like it, but the mandatory fees that aren't disclosed until later in the booking process is just a thinly veiled bait-and-switch tactic. (They won't do this, but they should at least say $XXX total, excluding required resort fee, in my opinion.)

This, except I'll go a step further and say resort fees (or any other mandatory fee not part of the total rate) should be outright illegal.

Anyway, that's another topic. This one is simply really poor design, and can be misleading in either direction. It's frustrating how Marriott's website and app have both gotten *worse* from a design/UI perspective in the past year or so. I used to really like Marriott.com with two exceptions - it was painful to filter *out* a single brand and it was painful to search multiple discount codes. But now I have a whole laundry list of things I don't like about the site.

Can we please stop making everything illegal? If it's disclosed properly, I just consider it part of the rate, albeit the part that doesn't garner any loyalty points.

In Europe at least, similar practice in other industries (e.g. airline fees) have been made illegal on the basis that a company shouldn't be advertising fees hidden purely for the reason of creating a misleading impression to the consumer (e.g. in price comparisons). I hope that the European Commission looks at destination fees soon before they make it across the Atlantic.

US airlines have been under similar laws for at least five years now. Advertised fares need to include all mandatory fees in most cases. From the Dept of Transportation website:

The sole intent of a resort fee is to not disclose it properly. There's literally nothing about a resort/destination fee other than deceiving people - primarily guests, but possibly in some cases travel agents and corporate travel departments.

It should be illegal as a simple consumer protection. It's not like I'm looking for government overreach or regulation of hotel rates. If a "resort" wants to charge me $1000/nt, fine - totally their legal right to try. But it should be illegal for them to advertise $25 and then slip in a $975 "resort fee". Perhaps a bit of hyperbole, but there are Vegas hotels already at resort fees greater than 100% of the room rate, so who knows?

I'm glad the federal government took action there. (Amused that Spirit is still mad about it - they wanted to advertise their $0.01 fares and this action basically prevented them from doing so. ) The challenge with hotels is that it has to come from states and cities, and hotel owners/property developers/etc. own more state/local politicians than travelers do.

Noticed this as well. Marriott is making it more difficult to see and determine the price changes. It used to be obvious, and now you have to go to the booking page and click yet again to expand the nightly rate area. Another lovely 'enhancement' where their hipster web designers think its a good thing to require additional clicks to get the same info that used to be there previously.

Gotta blame someone I guess!