Marriott bills bother travelers

Which hotel is the least accommodating to the needs of techno-travelers? If readers like Scott McVeigh, Richard Eppig or Regina Berens had to answer, they wouldn’t hesitate.

“Marriott,” says Eppig, who recently got the runaround from a property near Washington. “I have a very bad feeling about the hotel and Marriott in general.”

Why? It could have something to do with the hotel’s limited business center hours, its $10 set-up charge for printing documents or its 30-cent-per-page fee for making copies. It might also be the attitude that went with it. “They wouldn’t help me immediately,” he complains. “They said it would be two or three hours.”

Ditto for McVeigh. He was staying at a Marriott property last year when his boss faxed him a 10-page document. “The front desk called me to let me know it had arrived, and when I went to claim it they charged me $15,” he remembers. “I am a Club Marquis member with Marriott and spend at least 50 nights a year in Marriott properties. The real slap in the face was that for a received fax, they charged me $15 for 10 pieces of paper – and they bill themselves as the hotel designed with the business traveler in mind.”

And Berens? When she moderated a panel at – you guessed it – a Washington-area Marriott – one speaker asked if she could she could rent a projector. “They quoted us a rate of $800 a day,” she gripes. “Fortunately, another panelist was able to borrow one from his employer.”

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t single out a particular hotel chain, least of all one that owns a part of the Web site I’m writing for. But these aren’t really normal circumstances. A while back, I asked readers to weigh in on the most outrageous technology-related charges that hotels were hitting them with. I didn’t even solicit names of the offending properties. About a third of the responses went to great lengths to single out Marriott.

I agree that the three anecdotes are compelling enough to make anyone want to blacklist the company. And those are just a sample of the most egregious ones – I’ve got stories about excessive phone charges, gratuitous connection fees, and other technology-related extras that would likely turn this column into a tedious download.

“We don’t want to nickel and dime the business traveler,” Gordon Lambourne, a Marriott spokesman, told me. “In some cases, our fees either match our competitors or are better than our competitors’.”

To back up his assertions, Lambourne sent me a schedule of Marriott charges. He says the fees are determined at the corporate level, with the possible exception of rental charges for something extraordinary, like a projector. “If something’s not quite right, we check it out,” he added.

Indeed, the Marriott fact sheet detailed a relatively reasonable schedule of fees. There are no charges for incoming faxes, and outgoing faxes cost $1 per page in the States and $3 per page international (I’ve seen worse). The first 20 pages of a photocopy are free, with 15 cents billed to your room for each additional page.

“Marriott has spent a long time thinking about what they want to charge for its services,” observes Robert Mandelbaum, an analyst with PKF Consulting in Atlanta. “And people have always complained about it. I think if there’s enough of a backlash, Marriott will back off. But in the meantime, the hotel is being very aggressive when it comes to making money for themselves and their owners. I can understand the frustration from a consumer’s point of view.”

To be fair to Marriott, let’s not forget its innovations in corporate travel amenities, like its The Room That Works concept, which offers a large console table and mobile writing desk, two power outlets and a PC modem jack mounted in the console top, moveable task light, and a fully adjustable ergonomic chair at no extra cost to the customer. But I imagine that’s not where the problem lies for most Marriott critics. More likely, it’s fees the chain doesn’t control or the properties that stray from the corporate parent, that irks the travelers.

When everything goes as it should – which is to say, when a Marriott hotel follows its own policies and lets common sense determine what the corporation doesn’t – then the result is the following reader e-mail:

“As a road warrior for over 20 years you learn a lot of ways to cut expenses,” writes Jerry Suskind. “What I have found is that Courtyard by Marriott seems to be the best at keeping the laptop connection free for the time being. I am a Courtyard Club member, and get free local calls when I stay at Courtyards. They even make it easy to get connected as there are always two lines on the phone, extra outlets at the desk and some even have the line connection on the fixture to make it easier to hook up. Courtyards are geared to the business traveler and seem to understand our needs more than any other hotel chain I have found so far.”

Bottom line: I think Marriott isn’t as guilty as many readers think it is. Nor is it as innocent as it thinks it is. One thing is certain: We don’t have a blacklist-able series of offenses here, but a corporate problem that needs a little attention. In today’s competitive lodging industry, a big chain like Marriott wouldn’t systematically overbill its guests to the extent that last week’s e-mails suggest.

At least, I hope not.

All of which brings me to this week’s question. We’ve spent a lot of time picking apart the worst offenders when it comes to technology-related surcharges. But which hotel chain is the best? You know what I mean – the ones that don’t charge for local calls, give you free Internet access and other cool amenities that make getting connected easier.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

Be the first to comment