Reader Email: Marriott & SPG Booking Woes!

A LoyaltyLobby reader sent us an email about Marriott & SPG booking woes that has plagued the platform since Starwood was integrated into it three weeks ago on Saturday.

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Here’s the email from the reader:

I have been a loyal and very happy SPG Platinum member for many years, but like others I read from your daily postings, am growing frustrated at how some very basic issues are being handled post the August 18th migration onto the Marriott platform.

Tonight I am trying to book a hotel in New York (as in the Big Apple tourist City part), which one would assume to be a fairly straightforward process. Well it would have been up until August 18th for sure, but it seems not so now. Using Google Chrome on a Mac from the SPG site, if I enter ‘New York, NY USA’  (which appears to be the correct term), I get hotels in a wide area but not a single one in New York City. Using Safari and doing the same thing, I get the Manhattan area only, which is a bit out of my price range on my dates. See screenshots for both.

So having wasted far too long trying to resolve the issue and actually see all the hotels in New York SPG and Marriott have to offer, but failing, I’m taking my booking elsewhere to Hilton. They seem to have no such issues and must be laughing all the way to the bank as they see the chaos that is going on. If they would only make Hilton Lifetime Diamond status a more achievable 500 nights, instead of the current 1,000, I’d be booking with them on a more regular basis. Perhaps we could start a campaign to encourage them to do so !

I should add the SPG app seems to work just fine for this search, but with so many hotels to choose from in a small area, it’s hard to get a proper perspective in map view on a small screen, hence resorting to the computer.

We have received several messages from readers who have had issues trying to book Marriott/SPG hotels on their website and apps. Sometimes legacy Starwood hotels are not displayed at all (happened this past Saturday) and even Marriott ones have been missing at times.

Marriott started to revamp its website already a year ago and it has been sometimes a challenge to book hotels on it ever since. I usually have to do it in an incognito window or otherwise it just errors out (and I won’t clear all cookies on my computer) like the featured image above illustrates (just took it).

In June, when I was trying to book a Marriott hotel for a stay in Venice (Italy), it was showing hotels everywhere else in country besides my desired location.

Conclusion

Not sure if Marriott understands how many bookings they are losing due to website malfunctioning? The Marriott platform wasn’t stable when Starwood properties were piled on it and now we have this even greater mess.

I have had two one night stays since the program merger. I decided to let the things settle and all or most of the issues with my account resolved before giving any money to them.

Marriott might be in for a reckoning & surprise that the SPG elite members are not as sticky as they thought them to be.