Agree that this is a surprisingly bitter thread.....

This isn't a Marriott problem, and IME Marriott does its best to isolate "regular" guests from groups, weddings, etc. I've encountered a few of the "issues" described, (including most recently a couple of weekends ago), but in the vast majority of cases, my inconvenience has been minimal.

The hotel that comes to mind is the FS Marriott, in Huntsville, AL. Its adjacent to the Space and Rocket Center and they get LOTS of school groups....including during the week. Whenever I've been there, they've generally done a great job of keeping the kids off in their own area, and thus letting everyone else get a good night's sleep.

And sometimes, there's even an upside. At the FS property where I was staying earlier this month, the group hosting the event stipulated in their contract that the CL be kept open for the weekend (although no alcohol was served).

What I haven't seen mentioned in this thread is the likelihood of the "group" receiving a much better rate than all the rest of the saps paying more. Rubs a little salt in the wound I think.

I would not begrudge a group for getting a better rate since they are helping the hotel by guaranteeing a certain amount of rooms will be filled. After all, the hotel is a business, and they should seek to maximize their top and bottom line. My only concern is getting stuck with guests who are not considerate of others.

Stepping up on Soap Box

Regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, or whatever, every guest of a hotel is entitled to a decent room and a decent night’s sleep. After all, that is the basic service we are paying for. For weddings, sports teams, and other groups, I think it is a win win situation when the group is placed on the same floor in close proximity to each other and other non-group guests are placed elsewhere in the hotel. Doing so makes it convenient for the members of the group to visit with each other and helps to contain unusual noise levels to their area. Furthermore, no one should be allowed to make so much noise in a hotel that it carries to other floors and areas of the hotel. My two cents...

Stepping down from my Soap Box

It's all about paid room nights. Groups which use weekend nights are valued inasmuch as that's the inventory that is most likely to go unsold. Which is the reason that EEOs, S4Bs, TFBs, Family Deals w/free Pizza and movies are offered so often as an enticement to spur weekend patronage (in properties that cannot host large conventions).

The nights a room goes empty are assets that will never be recovered; that's axiomatic. So customers who will commit to purchasing significant numbers of them (and who are likely or dol provide repeat business) are offered enticements with special room rates being one as well as another which goes unsaid -- that misbehavior on the part of a member of a repeat customer group will be overlooked while the same behavior on the part of an individual guest will spur a more certain reaction (in the extreme, ejection).

Properties in the Hartford area annually host pre-teen (and older adolescent) soccer teams playing in a local tournament every Labor Day Weekend. (I'm sure there are others, but this is a group with which I'm familiar.)

With them comes the usual behavior one comes to expect -- we've been discussing it, but there's no point in reiterating it.

Business brings me to the location many times annually; sometimes the wife joins me for a getaway weekend. The staff knows us and one MOD confided to us that the hotel's Group Sales is well aware the effect they have on other guests, but is unconcerned; they have their mission -- "get butts into beds."

So it is left to the overwhelmed, undermanned and inexperienced associates typically on duty on weekends to handle.

Which they do, not by dealing with the troublemakers but by mollifying offended individual guests sometimes with points, sometimes forgiving a night's room charges and sometimes with both.

Brilliantly said, your points about underwhelmed weekend staff and an agressive sales force is exactly what I've been trying to say, unsucessfully. Differing goals, in my opinion - get butts in bed vs. trying to get through the weekend with a minimal amount of labor and trouble.

Groups coming into hotels on weekends aren't generally doing so to get a good nights sleep and be in bed by 10pm.

I think other hotel factors come into play as well. Doors don't have to slam so hard (my personal pet peeve) and walls don't have to be so thin so that even very considerate, non-drunk business guests can inadvertantly cause a problem.

For example, 2 nights ago at the SD Marriott, exhusted from jet lag and little sleep the night before, I fell asleep at 10pm. At 5 am, I got a call from Hotel Security asking me to turn down the TV due to a compliant. It couldn't have been that loud if I slept through it and I feel horrible that someone waited until 5 am to complain. Thin walls indeed. An associate of mine was treated to a coughing fit and balcony smoke entering his room at 4 am the same night.

. . . Brilliantly said, your points about underwhelmed weekend staff and an agressive sales force is exactly what I've been trying to say, unsucessfully. Differing goals, in my opinion - get butts in bed vs. trying to get through the weekend with a minimal amount of labor and trouble . . .

Rahmanbar makes an excellent observation pointing out that the name of the game is business and profit -- for a hotel, that bottom line is a body in a bed, food/drink, and events. And on occassion, employees do not perform with passion or comittment.

IMO, some business travelers here have an unconscious double standard. They becry Marriott making a buck or insist that a guest stay should be "perfect". Yet I wonder if they themselves are any less aggressive, ambitious or motivated to do whatever they have to do to insure their own bottom lines at their respective companys. Is your customer always satisfied with your business practices or do you too have operational & other constraints which sometimes create an incomplete/ambivilant product experience? Are all of your customers rational/cooperative or are some especially demanding and sometimes scheming?

Joshua and others rightly point to customer expectations. These expectations/interests can be characterized as uniform & shared as well as nit-picking and at times difficiult to fulfil. Ideally guests would all behave, all rooms would be quiet and comfortable and folks would get their favorite room and perfect UG. But that is not the real world. The question is whether Marriott consistently makes the effort.

I believe that the OP has a legitimate complaint about thier experience in-so-far as being located on an events floor. That there is noise at events or guests who get a little loud at a party or in the hotel bar is simply a fact of life and what human nature is all about. This does not relieve a hotel of a responsibility to keep folks in line.

I don't have Marriott on my list of companys who do not give a sh!t about the customer ( now US Airways, that's an entirely different matter :( ). That's not to say that things won't/don't go wrong at Marriotts. As many business folks know, personal relationships play a big role in how successful/unsuccessful a venture or encounter will turn out. In this instance, to whom and how you speak to them plays a big part in how things are worked out in the process of parley and give and take. Works in business and works during a hotel stay. I can't say that either side always walks away with a resolution, but I'm confident that a good company will learn from each experience while providing retroactive compensation in instances where they fall short. It's all a matter of how one approaches and works with people.

Barry

Interesting...we stay at the Marriott Redmond Town Center (Microsoft HQ in this town) for Christmas week every year. The lounge is closed that week, so they comp us breakfast. But the best experience we had a few years ago, there were only 25-30 rooms sold. They know the specific room Mrs. K-G loves so they gave it to us. No one was withing 2 floors of us for most of the stay. That is service!

Or neither (so far), in my case....

ETA: I stayed last night in a FI in New Jersey. There was some kind of teenage girl sports team there (about 15-20 girls and some parents). It was quiet as a mouse.

Gee, I thought my point was pretty clear...those that are causing the problems are usually in a group and therefore getting a better rate...the rest are individuals, paying a higher regular rate and are being disrupted by those paying the lower rate. Still rubs salt in the wound, doesn't it? I mean, you do get it don't you? I don't need long, in depth sermons about more bums in beds to sustain the economic need...the individual's experience is being sacrificed at the expense of the group and management on many occasions do not wish to deal with it.

Oddly enough, I've seen "group rates" that were higher than publicly available rates that I found on the hotel website. Either the group was really unsophisticated or somebody was taking a cut of the action.

This sometimes happens with the GOV rate as well, especially if the property has low weekend occupancy.

Excellent idea.