Hey, you. Yes, you, the guy with the piles and piles of hotel rewards points stacked up nice and neat. Might want to think about booking a vacation and using up those points soon, as most of the major hotel chains have either already devalued their points or will do so pretty darn soon. [More]
Beware, Hoarders Of Hotel Rewards Points: Book Now Before It’s Too Late
By March 18, 2013
IKEA Enlists Marriott’s Help In Assembling European Budget Hotels Using Only An Allen Key
By March 5, 2013
IKEA announced last year that it wanted to build a bunch of hotels across Europe, right around the time it unveiled plans for its own district in Hamburg, Germany. And now the company is one step closer to its dream but it needs Marriott’s help. Ostensibly even it can’t decipher those wordless instructions sheets. [More]
Owners Kick Marriott Out Of Waikiki Hotel
By August 30, 2011
Hotel chain Marriott is no longer taking reservations for the Waikiki Edition hotel, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a room. In a late-night raid last weekend, the chain was kicked out by the hotel’s owners, who changed the locks and brought in new management without even calling to say goodbye first. [More]
Marriott Drops "It's Your Fault" Claim In Rape Case
By August 17, 2009
After it broke last week that Stamford Marriott Hotel & Spa was claiming it was the fault of the victim and her two toddlers that she was raped in their parking garage, the hotel has decided to withdraw the claim. They also apologized for the rape in a general sort of way—but not for subpoenaing her friends and professional acquaintances who otherwise would not have known about the crime.
Marriott Says Woman Is Responsible For Her Rape
By August 14, 2009
[Update: Marriott has dropped the appeal.] If you want to live dangerously, why not try an unrelaxing visit to the Stamford Marriott Hotel & Spa? It features a game room, a BBQ/picnic area, $10 a day Internet access, and the occasional mentally unhealthy transient wandering for days around the parking garage waiting to attack you. Best of all, if you are attacked Marriott will let you take all the credit for it, and then subpoena your friends and professional contacts, thereby permanently ruining any anonymity you hoped to maintain. Because at Stamford Marriott, if you’re raped in our parking garage by a guy our security should have noticed and kicked out, don’t come crying to us!
Marriott Is Nice To You When Jerks Charge Food To Your Room
By July 28, 2009
Reader Stephen writes in to let us know that the Marriott Residence Inn in Boulder, CO was nice to him when some random jerks charged food to his room.
Marriott Emails You To Let You Know That You Did Not Give Permission For Them To Email You
By October 6, 2008
Marriott really wants to know what you think of their hotels. Unfortunately, they don’t have permission to solicit your participation in surveys. The solution? They email you to let you know that you asked them not to email you.
Crowne Plaza Hotel Blindsides You With A $235.13 Hold For Incidental Charges
By August 4, 2008
Much like that nasty little gas station problem we talked about awhile back, hotels just love to slap holds on your debit or credit card accounts for “incidental charges.” There’s nothing wrong or uncommon about the practice, but its difficult or impossible to tell exactly how much the hold might be — and for some consumers who aren’t expecting it, the holds can cause big problems. Reader Eric recently got slapped with a $253.13 hold from the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Kansas City, and he’s a little irked because they didn’t disclose the hold when he was checking in, and they only refunded $160 of it when he checked out.
Violating A Hotel's No Smoking Policy Could Cost You $250
By February 23, 2008
Hotels are starting to to hit smokers with hefty fines for violating their no smoking policies. Take Dan Cole. He didn’t light up in his non-smoking Marriott room, honest. Those butts in his garbage can? Um, he smoked them somewhere else and threw them out in the room?
Marriott Fails: Hotel Still Under Construction, Leaves Your Door Wide Open, No Hot Water
By January 10, 2008
Reader Allan stays at Marriott hotels a lot. He has platinum status, meaning that he stays at Marriott hotels for more than 75 days a year. One might think this level of loyalty would mean that he’d get a response to his complaint letter.
Marriott Ruined My Wedding Night!
By September 8, 2007
“I got married over Labor Day weekend in North Chicago, Illinois. We did a lot of advance legwork to set up a hotel for our guests that was close to the venue and convenient. Our wedding venue recommended the Marriott Courtyard in Waukegan/Gurnee. It was more expensive then the other hotels in the area and a bit further away, but they offered something irresistible– a free shuttle to and from the wedding venue for all of our guests staying there. Since we had been contemplating hiring vans to shuttle our guests around so no one would drive drunk, this was a no-brainer. Plus, the Marriott has a good brand name and we felt confident things would go smoothly.
DC Madam's Favorite Hotels
By July 16, 2007
Inside, an interactive Googlemaps Mashup showing the most popular hotels from the DC Madam’s phone records.
Top 10 Most "Ho-Friendly" DC Hotels, Based On The DC Madam's Phone Records
By July 13, 2007
If you want to have sex with a prostitute in Washington D.C., try the Marriott.
Marriott's ISP Blames Scam Site Redirect On World's First Bisexual Rootkit
By May 18, 2007
There’s been a comment war boiling as Marriott, Will, and the hotel’s internet access company (GTS) duke it out to discern the vulnerability redirecting Marirott internet using guests to a casino scam site.
Marriott Server Compromised, Rerouting Guest's Internet To Casino Scam Site?
By May 16, 2007
When Will changed around the server settings to use a public DNS server instead of Marriott’s, the problem disappeared, leading Will to think someone had “poisoned” Marriott’s DNS servers to drive traffic to their casino scam page(s). He then reported this to Marriott’s techs. We’ve spoken ourselves with Marriott’s server people and they confirm that the secondary DNS is wacked but they need to investigate further.
Best Hotels For Free WiFi
By May 1, 2007
Hotel Chatter has unleashed their yearly survey of that most elusive of perks, free wifi! We don’t know if any hotel executives read this blog, but if you do, put free wifi in your hotel. Do it right now. Then call your friend Bob who works at an airline and tell him to put free wifi in his terminal. The Jenny who works at the library and Peter who works at the Parks District…
Faked/Altered Customer Satisfaction Suveys: Marriott
By March 9, 2007
(Corporate hotels have little to worry about because if they foul up, Marriott will just send in a glut of extra labor to fix the problem.) So how to keep labor costs way down and keep the scores way up? Easy.
