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I'm amongst the most frequent guests at Starwood, spending >100 nights a year in their hotels. I wasn't thrilled when it was announced they'd be acquired by Mar

I'm amongst the most frequent guests at Starwood, spending >100 nights a year in their hotels. I wasn't thrilled when it was announced they'd be acquired by Marriott. This year, they began the switchover process to migrating to Marriott's technology, and the full switch officially happened in mid-August. It was a complete and utter disaster. Everything was buggy, points mysteriously disappeared, reservations disappeared. Inconsistent UI, a mix of old and new systems. A truly awful experience dealing with support agents who were incapable of comprehending what was happening. I'm still waiting for a handful of stays to be credited to my account months later and nobody can help me because the systems are broken. I found myself staying mostly at Hyatt hotels while the dust settled. I'll end the year with another 100 nights with Starwood/Marriott, and 80 with Hyatt. But, given the direction the company has taken since the merger, that number will likely be going down on the Marriott side. After hearing that Marriott laid off the majority of Starwood's technical staff before attempting this migration, I'm not surprised it went this way. I'm also very much inclined to believe that the data breach happened during this migration.

verst 8y ago
Agreed that their migration from SPG to Marriott has been painful. It ended up creating 3 new logins for me before finally consolidating everything under a new number. Out of curiosity, do you find your Marriott / SPG Ambassador to be useful? I reached Platinum Premier Elite with Ambassador status in November but my ambassador hasn't been helpful at all. The Your24 perk also rarely works in practice. It's a nice marketing gimmick, but definitely not worth it so far.
- kenneth 8y ago
  Ambassador status is highly dependent on who you get. Overall, my ambassador is a nice guy who's professional, friendly, and helpful. I also really appreciate having a dedicated line of support considering how awful Marriott's customer support otherwise are. They're organized a few upgrades for me when they really mattered, and are my main point of contact for support, especially for some pretty complex issues which would've been much more painful through traditional channels. Beyond that, I can't say it's made that meaningful of a difference. The quality of the service has gone markedly down since the August integration. My understanding is that ambassadors have been bogged down with technical issues, an influx of new customers (going from 50 guests per ambassador to >300), and a big drop in morale. A lot of the issues they can't help with aren't their fault, but rather problems with Marriott policies and technology. And oh: on Your24, I've only tried to use it a couple times, and had it work about 50% of the time. I've checked in before 3pm many times and pretty much always get a room. (Except one frustrating time after a red-eye where I needed a shower desperately and the hotel had no rooms available or any showers in the gym. I was not a happy camper.)
btown 8y ago
You might be very interested in the following talk, where a Marriott tech lead describes how as recently as 2013 (and it's ambiguous, but it's likely still the case), much of the Marriott pricing engine was running on a single "green screen" (his words) IBM mainframe. He speaks about how only in ~2014 with a management shakeup did culture begin to shift towards acceptance of open source components. But, as we all know, these types of organizations don't turn on a dime, and sadly this breach is likely to make them more conservative (and increase reliance on those old-school systems) rather than less. I'm not surprised at all about your experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdFYEuWWpzo&t=5m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdFYEuWWpzo&t=5m30s Disclosure: I'm working on a project (currently stealth) in the alternative accommodations (vacation rentals) space. Lots of people all over trying to reinvent these types of booking engines, and it's a tough challenge to get right. I don't blame them for not wanting to deal with distributed systems on top of those challenges. But IMO that's part and parcel of a modern approach to the problem.

verst 8y ago

Agreed that their migration from SPG to Marriott has been painful. It ended up creating 3 new logins for me before finally consolidating everything under a new number. Out of curiosity, do you find your Marriott / SPG Ambassador to be useful? I reached Platinum Premier Elite with Ambassador status in November but my ambassador hasn't been helpful at all. The Your24 perk also rarely works in practice. It's a nice marketing gimmick, but definitely not worth it so far.

kenneth 8y ago
Ambassador status is highly dependent on who you get. Overall, my ambassador is a nice guy who's professional, friendly, and helpful. I also really appreciate having a dedicated line of support considering how awful Marriott's customer support otherwise are. They're organized a few upgrades for me when they really mattered, and are my main point of contact for support, especially for some pretty complex issues which would've been much more painful through traditional channels. Beyond that, I can't say it's made that meaningful of a difference. The quality of the service has gone markedly down since the August integration. My understanding is that ambassadors have been bogged down with technical issues, an influx of new customers (going from 50 guests per ambassador to >300), and a big drop in morale. A lot of the issues they can't help with aren't their fault, but rather problems with Marriott policies and technology. And oh: on Your24, I've only tried to use it a couple times, and had it work about 50% of the time. I've checked in before 3pm many times and pretty much always get a room. (Except one frustrating time after a red-eye where I needed a shower desperately and the hotel had no rooms available or any showers in the gym. I was not a happy camper.)

btown 8y ago

You might be very interested in the following talk, where a Marriott tech lead describes how as recently as 2013 (and it's ambiguous, but it's likely still the case), much of the Marriott pricing engine was running on a single "green screen" (his words) IBM mainframe. He speaks about how only in ~2014 with a management shakeup did culture begin to shift towards acceptance of open source components. But, as we all know, these types of organizations don't turn on a dime, and sadly this breach is likely to make them more conservative (and increase reliance on those old-school systems) rather than less. I'm not surprised at all about your experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdFYEuWWpzo&t=5m30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdFYEuWWpzo&t=5m30s Disclosure: I'm working on a project (currently stealth) in the alternative accommodations (vacation rentals) space. Lots of people all over trying to reinvent these types of booking engines, and it's a tough challenge to get right. I don't blame them for not wanting to deal with distributed systems on top of those challenges. But IMO that's part and parcel of a modern approach to the problem.