I will add that even you call reservations first, there is absolutely no guaranty the agent will do it right. The only time I tried this under the new rules, it was bungled, and I've read reports of same by others here on FT.

Bottom line is that Marriott has created an ambiguous protocol and failed to properly train its agents. A particularly poor set of facts on which to overlay the classic FT "blame the victim" narrative.

And then there is this!

ironic

When did the rules change? I rarely do this but the last time I did (2023), I made the reservation on points and then promptly called the hotel to give them the name of the person checking in. They had zero issue with it. And my family member had zero issue with the reservation. It was a last minute, flight cancelled situation and I'd rather just book a room for my family member than have them stand in a 3 hour line to get told by the airline CS that weather doesn't cover the hotel.

I'm all for following the new process if there is one. But my assumption (we know what that means) is I could still book a reservation and call the hotel to give them the name of the person checking in and not have any issues. I didn't trust the Ambassador line to do anything right and I sure as heck don't trust whoever answers the Titanium line these days.

-RM

The names were not on the reservation initially because i made the reservation -ONLINE- and when you do that you can only specify the number of guests (which I did) but not the names ....
To put the names you need to call which i did a few days later ...

I know now (from this thread) that I should have called upfront for everything : reservation (property, dates ) and add the guest names when it is going to be a gifted reservation ..

Yes I screwed up for not knowing the rules ... but I talked to 5 different bonvoy employees and the front desk at the property and -NONE- seem to truly understand what was going on let alone fix it ...

As I have stated to Bonvoy in my initial complaint .. over 30 yrs. / 3000nights there has been occasional screw ups ... but once a problem occured it never took more than i call / email to get a sensible resolution ...

pbr6891 ...

Indeed I would have been completely satisfied if ANY of the Bonvoy reps (before checkin or while trying to checkin) seeing the reservation i had made and understanding what i wanted to do had told me "Well Mr pbr6891 i need to redo the reservation so that it is all setup properly to follow the proper protocols .. I will cancel the one you made and redo it for you it's going to be quick .. i have noted the dates and the property just give me a moment i will get back to you to get the names " .

Sadly i perceived that they seemed to be knowing what they were doing and that everything was good "now" when it wasnt ...

I think that's the key: call the hotel not Marriott. If you speak to someone at a hotel and they permit your arrangement then it's almost certainly going to be fine even if it's esoteric / weird / unheard of / violates the Marriott rules. The problem many people encounter is that Marriott do not provide a clear method for contacting individual hotels so most guests assume (quite reasonably) that booking with Marriott + clear contact information for Marriott customer service means Marriott customer service can sort out any specific hotel arrangements. At best, Marriott support can reliably modify a booking and/or an account but they cannot make commitments on behalf of a hotel, whereas a hotel employee can make commitments on behalf of the hotel. There's always the small chance that a hotel employee makes a mistake but even then, hotels are much better placed to rectify their own mistake.

I find that the blame-the-victim narrative is seen more or less as frequently on FT as is the-airline/hotel/car rental/whatever-is-being-unfair-to-me-because-it's-trying-to-hold-me-to-its-published-rules narrative.

there is definitely a lot of that but there's also a lot of people nitpicking complainers to look for any tiny transgression they can use to blame the poster for everything bad that has ever happened in the universe. If you tried to check in 1 minute early they would say you brought all misfortune on yourself.

That�s one way of looking at it.

People post here because they don�t know why they have the problem they experienced. I think most responses are genuinely trying to troubleshoot and help the posters see a different perspective they may not have considered.

The best way to approach a complaint is to understand and address the business� perspective.

Maybe the poster would have more success if this complaint is framed something like I have now realized how to properly gift a reservation but I do see the confusion in the terms, and this wasn�t brought up before when I added their names�

absolutely, that happens a lot. but in this particular case, post #5 in this thread is what kicked off this tangent and that is absolutely not a genuine attempt to try to troubleshoot the issue.

Except that's not consistent with the rules Marriott has set up, which require you to call Marriott reservations in the first instance. This was done in order to implement a limitation on the number of award stays a member can gift per year (five, IIRC), the idea apparently being that Marriott is able to track this since these reservations now get special handling. Further, you seem to be suggesting that the property has some power to say yay or nay to a reservation type that Marriott specifically allows and has set up specific procedures that members are supposed to follow (which do not include calling the hotel to confirm afterwards).

Again, the issues OP experienced here are all on Marriott for establishing a poorly considered set of new rules, and then totally bungling the implementation.

this unhinged meta analysis is classic flyertalk

marriott screwed up and is unable to own its screw ups

EOM

That's not my experience. Every time I've made an online reservation, my name was automaticaly placed on the reservation.

I had always taken that to apply to mutiple room reservations where you want to add a name(s) instead of replace your own name with someone else"s.