boss315

........lesson learned!

cova

Marriott just doesn't enforce the member + 1 guest. The Ts&Cs do not allow family members (ie Children) like Airline lounges. Unless both adults are Gold+ and have separate rooms, then no more than 2 children should be allowed. If both are not Gold with separate rooms - then no children.

But Marriott is just not enforcing. Lounges are overcrowded with the UA arrangement - giving Marriott Gold to any UA Gold.

Marriott should either update their Ts&Cs to allow members to bring in as many guests as they want or enforce it.

Marriotts are moving more lounges to the lobby level and taking over all or part of the restaurant. The Bar area is becoming the only restaurant. So they are giving lounge food and breakfast to most everyone and just rise the hotel rates to pay for it. Hotel restaurants are shutting down.

lhs323

I would have prayed for the hotel to open up the ballroom as a temporary lounge space during my last stay there around Christmas. The lounge itself was mobbed and I had to wait in line over 30 minutes just to grab anything. When I complained, the manager said over 70% of guests were Gold and Platinum. I'm never staying there again.

jsucool76

I recently stayed at the essex house in NYC and they didn't move breakfast to a ballroom. I walked in and one of the attendants just rudely walked up to me and said "Oh we're full, just give me your name and I'll tell you when we have space"

So I just grabbed a water bottle and left.

jeanie

Well, I am going to NYC on May 26, the day after Memorial Day, to stay for several days. I had planned to stay at the Marriott Marquis. Based on this thread, I am concerned now about lounge access. Would it be better to stay at the Residence Inn instead? Thanks.

hhoope01

I'm thinking the lounge there would be even harder to get into.

jeanie

I guess I should have been more specific. I was actually referring to the crowd and the complimentary breakfast at the Residence Inn versus the lounge access at the Marriott Marquis.

pinniped

I've stayed at the Marriott East Side during weeks when the lounge was a circus. (Not really because of kids...it was just a circus because of the number of elites there.)

I've stayed in a lot of hotels where the rooms on the C-level permit four guests. I assume if you're actually booked in one of those rooms, you can use the lounge. I wonder if that's how the lounges are getting so crowded, even in places that enforce the 1+1 on non-C-level elites?

I see both sides: I get why elites want benefits to apply to leisure stays (including the people booked and legally staying in their room), and I also get why hotels want to curtail massive overcrowding in lounges. For a family trip to NYC, I'd *probably* opt for Residence Inn...hell, I'd probably do that just because of typical Manhattan room sizes. I'd certainly rather have the relative calm of an RI over the general circus that is the Marquis.

hhoope01

I did realize that but couldn't resist answering based on the way it read. Please accept my apology.

I've taken the family to NYC a few times and they've always wanted to stay at the Marquis. It may be huge, but the location is great (I almost always get upgraded to a TS view room) and the rooms are nice and large especially for NYC. And yes, the lounge can get crowded at breakfast time, but with a little advanced planning we were able to deal with that.

jeanie

Thank you for the responses. This isn't a family vacation. But I should have realized that the Marquis is going to be a family hotel. So that was a good point. Maybe the Residence Inn would be a better fit. I was really looking at the Marquis because I might want to go to a show in the evening, and it is right by the TKTS booth.

NDN

There are actually a lot of reasons why the lounges are full now:

(1) RewardsPlus
(2) Ritz CC
(3) Status buy back

RewardsPlus is hugely lopsided. UA Gold customers get the meat of the MR program, but MR Platinum customers get virtually nothing from UA (Silver). In my opinion, this should be changed to a mapping like this:

UA 1K gets MR Platinum
UA Platinum gets MR Gold
UA Gold/Silver gets MR Silver

MR Platinum gets UA Gold
MR Gold gets UA checked bag free

UA Silver vs checked bag free is really the same. You can manufacture pretty close to UA silver just by getting a United credit card. Yes, the E+ seats are not there, but they are not expensive to purchase, and often I have found that the only seats left (to many airports) are just middles anyway at 24h.

I would then change the Ritz CC program. Currently, MR Gold is given to a holder who spends $10k in a year (or anything the first year) on the card. That is a VERY low threshold. I would up that to $30k. This would reduce the number of people who get MR Gold and crowd lounges.

Finally, the buyback option is a challenge. A person can keep buying back MR Gold or Platinum every year for 25,000 to 40,000 MR points! Thus, if you currently get the Ritz card and qualify for gold, you can never even hit the $10k spending (or $30k in my proposal) and just buy back gold with MR points! Instead, the buyback option should ONLY be available every other year. Then you can still buy the status back, but not every year. If you go from MR Platinum and then buy it back before doing a soft landing to MR Gold, you could buy MR Gold back again. Even so, that is a tough sell, and it also means a maximum of only 3 extra years at Gold or above without qualifying through CC spend or nights earned.

joshua362

I have not been in a decent FS/REN lounge in a long, long time, breakfast or evening.

I was actually blown away last weekend by the Manchester NH FI as they had soy chocolate milks and little boxes of cereal for take out, that impressed me more...

SCEflyer

I was in the YVR Pinnacle lounge for evening and breakfast one day last week, and at the SEA Waterfront for breakfast a day later. Although I did not find them to be exceptional, they were both were strongly in the "decent" category.

The food was plentiful and fresh at both locations; nothing looked like it had been taken out of a freezer and then left to defrost overnight.

bitburgr

I agree a remapping needs to happen but I still don't think you've made this equitable for MR members.

If UA 1K get MR Platinum, then why should MR Platinum only get UA Gold?

dayone

Airline status is more valuable and tougher to obtain than hotel status.

I think NDN's scheme is quite equitable and an improvement over the current offering.