Guys I know many of you are displeased with MI these days, I have always tried to assist and give my personal point of view, doesn't mean I agree or disagree with anything that is being said....please remember when I post I'm purely trying to help or in this thread point out mistaken statements.....regardless of my point of view or others view on if it's greed it's a fact that RevPAR declined substantially after 9/11/01 and has only recently regained those levels before even factoring in inflation...I feel this thread has gone off topic enough that I'll refrain from continuing to post here (no I'm not upset and sulking away, I just dont know what good it will do to continue along this off-topic discussion)

I think this thread started to stray shortly after my recommendation that the sticky thread return with the company codes cleansed.

For the record, I agree with aaupgrade's points in response to my post - and I agree that Marriott and the hotel industry have been posting wicked earnings growth since 2003. Look at earnings. Look at EPS growth. Look at market cap. Look at any metric you like - Marriott has been on a big fat smelly five year winning streak. (OK, really four & change.) I don't blame 'em for it - in fact, one of my best friends works for Marriott HQ, so I'm quite happy about it - but let's not try to deny it either.

Marriott has a mild sell-off after earnings this week, but they're still trading a couple bucks off their record high and headed for about $2 per share in earnings. I'm happy for them.

<Insert my standard pagelong theory about how this success has convinced major hotel chains that their optimal strategy is to discourage frequent guests from continuing to stay, in a gamble that infrequent guests will fill the rooms and increase revenues.>

Anyway, back on-topic, I home a sanitized form of the codes thread can be revived.

Guys,

I've got some questions regarding those codes.
But first of all I'd like to tell you all that I've found this forum thanks to those codes (using google) so for me it is some kind of sad thing.
No, I'm not using Marriott that often but I'd like to save some £££ using AVAIBLE codes.

Anyway, my questions are:

- is it illegal to publish those codes under US law?
- is it illegal to publish those codes under FT rules?

If answer is NO, then how MR can force you guys to delete thread? I'm not getting this. here, in UK or generally in Europe we do have different laws.
I can't imagine someone requesting to take down forum threads.

What has happened to FREEDOM OF SPEECH?

Cheers
Chris

Not illegal in a criminal sense, but it's in FT's best interests to prevent obvious fraud where it is being advocated in a forum. Randy always tried to maintain positive relationships with the programs, and I'm sure FT's new owners hope to do the same.

It's a gray area. The very fact that Coupon Connection exists - and nearly every trade made there technically violated the program T's & C's - means that FT isn't bowing down to all of the ridiculous fine print in every program. But a thread where people were misrepresenting themselves as employees of companies, etc. - I guess that was a little too much.

That's why I suggested that the thread be sanitized - or a new one started with the various promo codes. However, I can tell I'm in the minority on that opinion: people here either hate Marriott or are headed to other boards where they can view all the codes. Or both.

i'll start by saying I'm not an attorney, nor do I have any legal experience.. on that note, I thought the the courts have said that sites are not responsible for the content.. wasn't this based on that site don'tdatehim.com or something where site owners are not responsible for what the posters publish... etc.. again, just what I thought

RevPAR figures aren't always telling the whole story. There are ways where the calculations used by the WSJ -- and the WSJ doesn't make good calculations of its own in this area -- for revpar are actually misleading. Certain income figures tell a more telling story ... for now. Marriott's raking in the money .... and their sophistication in the game of making money in this arena (even by creative measures) is still no laughing matter. ;)

No.

"Is it a violation to publish codes under FT TOS/rules?" In practice, not generally.

Thank you for all those posts. So HOW MR can force you guys to remove those lists? I'm not getting this at all.

Are we trying to be nice to the company who is not nice to us?

Cheers
Chris

In the interest of future expectations, i would suggest that someone from Talkboard or Randy personally to explain what happened. And i would ask that "the explaination that moderation not be discussed" not be used as in this case, it is a unique scenario whichs calls for it. Maybe the moderator could pvt those who have asked what happened if the moderator does not feel comfortable disclosing it openly. bdschobel must know something or the thread wouldn't have reopened.

i would say that it is suspicious and VERY dodgy that a whole thread of over 8 pages suddenly disappeared. One of the moderators, Talkboard president or even Randy himself must have deleted the threads. Threads do not just disappear without someone with moderation module deleting posts/threads.

I don't think that it is in the interest of all parties to keep it a secret and it is in bad faith to expect Ft users participation if rules are made to suit an individual and we wouldn't know how to avoid suspensions and bans.

For what it's worth, TalkBoard had nothing to do with this & I'm assuming that bdschobel didn't either as in another thread he said he was going to find out what happened.

bhatnasx
TB Member

I agree completely.

And that is somewhat disquieting as he is the moderator for this forum and changes were made without even a notification to him, much less a request. :(

And I too agree with Pinniped's suggestion of scrubbing the list. Personally, I haven't had any problem getting a corporate code from Marriott Reservations in the past. I suspect that was because I used the ones that I was entitled to use.

What about the obvious hotel pricing errors that are posted from time to time.

Who got to Randy?

might be time to start up Flyertalk 2.0 somewhere.

not to cause offence but i would be keen to know how come this thread got reopened when it was closed for a few days. apparently, the explaination given at that point in time, was that bdschobel wanted to find out whats going on before letting the rumours continue. there is now double standards on flyertalk. The codes are allowed on other forums but not on marriot forums.

Who bought Flyertalk?
And do they own MI stock?

If so we could have a big problem.