Marriott doesn’t want its hotels annoyed by having to deal with guests. So they’ve made it harder for guests to ask to customize their stays.
- Marriott has eliminated the ability of guests to add “requests” or “notes” to a reservation.
- Until very recently, there was a text field that let you type in requests while making a booking on the Marriott website.
- There are selection boxes, but the freeform field is gone.
To be sure, hotels often ignored these requests. But there’s really no way to communicate with the hotel in advance specific requests that aren’t pre-identified checkboxes, like the extra blankets or what you might need for an allergy anymore.
Rmoving the field doesn’t reduce guest needs. It just shifts cost to phone calls at the worst time, when hotels are busy, and increases friction and disappointment on the day of check-in.
Marriott doesn’t publish hotel email addresses on their website. Hotel e-mails aren’t in booking confirmation e-mails, either. They’re hiding this on purpose.
Pick up the phone, I guess, if you can reach the right person – reservations generally reverts to the Marriott 800 number, and the front desk fielding calls probably isn’t going to get you much with requests for a future stay.
You can make requests through the Marriott app, but only after online check-in opens for the stay. You can’t do it in advance, and many properties don’t have mobile chat enabled anyway.But actually writing out a request? Not with Marriott, if you book direct. They push direct booking, but that channel now has less ability to communicate than it used to.
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