OH my Goodness this day SUCKS!!!

[MegaDisney]

So I got to work this morning at 11. I just finished working on my first problem of the day!!!

So 3 guys booked a room at the Ramada Inn on Katella (The one with the Shark Mascot) with our office in New Zeland. They took Super Shuttle from LAX and got to the hotel to find it CLOSED DOWN!!! So after 16 hours on a plane, over an hour with Super Shuttle my passengers were on the street in Anaheim without a room!

So needless to say it took me 3 HOURS to find a room in the Anaheim area with availability.

Thanks to the guys at Disney Travel I found a room at the Anaheim Marriott.

Then, my passengers show up to check in and the front desk manager there (Marcus AKA DICK!) wouldn't let my passengers check in because my corporate office had not yet faxed the payment authorization to them. He was such a jerk that I ended up having to call the corporate offices of Marriott to complain about him!

So they finally get the fax and the corporate card I put the room on DECLINED??? WTF???

So another hour on the phone with my finance department and I find out that they hadn't paid the bill on my corporate card!

OMG this was a nightmare!!

I finally got the guys in a room and called them to see how it was and there were STOKED!! They got quite an upgrade!

I warned them to stay away from the mini-bar, and to make sure they used FastPass!

They ended up VERY happy, I ended up vowing NEVER to book another Marriott room, and now I NEED A DRINK!!!

Not very interesting but I needed to vent.

AVOID MARRIOTT AND IF YOU SEE MARCUS ONE DAY GIVE HIM A BIG SLAP IN THE FACE FOR ME!!!

[CaraGoCeltica]

Here is a Nice Kick A$$ Margarita for ya!!! Hope that Helps along with the hug I'm gonna give you right now....

[Hakuna Makarla]

the Ramada was closed?? OMG you poor thing, why did they not let you know? poor travelers, that sucks, but sounds like you did a great job taking care of them, !!!

[Alchimedes]

Geez that sounds like the worst case scenario played out! Sorry to hear your friends were put through the ringer. Is there two Anahiem Marriott's? I have stayed there and had a great experience. This Marcus guy needs the boot.
Got one of their suites for cheap.
Hope your day gets better MegaDisney.

[Hyperbole]

Wow Mega! Sounds like a day that would put me over the edge. Time to have some quality time with a martini... or three.

[MickeysGirl]

Sorry to read that Mega, but you handled it beautifully.
I'm off to find a Voodoo doll with Marcus's name on it.

[MinionLumbo]

although i know it was frustrating for you, why would you expect any front desk clerk or manager to allow guests to check-in before payment is made or guaranteed (a verbal promise is not acceptable) with a valid credit card?

It is a Hotel, not a shelter.

this is not a policy exclusive to Marriott - so why be upset with Marriott. Marriott Corporate offices will likely praise the front desk manager for doing his job correctly.

i'm glad your guests found a room.

but i would have thanked Marriott for being accommodating instead of lodging a complant against the manager for expecting payment.

[MegaDisney]

First of all I gave them my IATA number and my personal credit card to hold the room AND made special arrangements with the reservation agent at corporate who called the Property Manager to get authorization PRIOR to telling the passenger to go check in.

And the property manager called me back much later and was VERY apologetic for the behaviour of this power hungry front desk clerk, who not only pissed off the passenger and my agency but the corporate desk I called to complain. He literally snapped at the corp. rep on the phone and hung up non us. We send MILLIONS of dollars of revenue to the 5 Marriotts in the Anaheim area.

The managers job is to do what his boss says, not go on a power trip cuz he is the "front desk manager" and refuse to even look into the arrangements I had made HOURS before with his boss.

[MegaDisney]

this is not a policy exclusive to Marriott - so why be upset with Marriott. Marriott Corporate offices will likely praise the front desk manager for doing his job correctly.

I am aware of these policies. I have been a Travel Agent for YEARS and know well enough the policies. Again I made special arrangements PRIOR to sending my passengers to the Hotel. I am also aware that any policy can be "bent" in special situations.

I wasn't like I was some Anonymous joe blow off the street, I work for one of the worlds largest travel organizations in the world.

Marriott Corporate will likely send a letter to this Hotel if they continue to employ people who are on power trips pissing off guests, angencies and corporate customer care reps who are trying to sort things out.

[MegaDisney]

One more quick thing, we check people in all the time prior to payment. We have billing agreements. So when a passenger pays us, we send a MONTHLY check for the rooms booked, so sorry to burst your bubble, but our passengers check in ALL THE TIME without paying.

[MegaDisney]

Darn I am still stressed about this!!!


Sorry if this came across as hateful, still holding some anger towards Markus and took it out here.

NOW I REALLY NEED A DRINK!!!

[kelly]

So I got to work this morning at 11. I just finished working on my first problem of the day!!!

So 3 guys booked a room at the Ramada Inn on Katella (The one with the Shark Mascot) with our office in New Zeland. They took Super Shuttle from LAX and got to the hotel to find it CLOSED DOWN!!! So after 16 hours on a plane, over an hour with Super Shuttle my passengers were on the street in Anaheim without a room!

So needless to say it took me 3 HOURS to find a room in the Anaheim area with availability.

Thanks to the guys at Disney Travel I found a room at the Anaheim Marriott.

Then, my passengers show up to check in and the front desk manager there (Marcus AKA DICK!) wouldn't let my passengers check in because my corporate office had not yet faxed the payment authorization to them. He was such a jerk that I ended up having to call the corporate offices of Marriott to complain about him!

So they finally get the fax and the corporate card I put the room on DECLINED??? WTF???

So another hour on the phone with my finance department and I find out that they hadn't paid the bill on my corporate card!

OMG this was a nightmare!!

I finally got the guys in a room and called them to see how it was and there were STOKED!! They got quite an upgrade!

I warned them to stay away from the mini-bar, and to make sure they used FastPass!

They ended up VERY happy, I ended up vowing NEVER to book another Marriott room, and now I NEED A DRINK!!!

Not very interesting but I needed to vent.

AVOID MARRIOTT AND IF YOU SEE MARCUS ONE DAY GIVE HIM A BIG SLAP IN THE FACE FOR ME!!!

what us your job

are youn a shuttle driver'

[MegaDisney]

I am the head of the Help Department for the worlds largest student travel agency.

[MinionLumbo]

i'm sincerely sorry if i have futher frustrated your day - that was not my intent.

my questions were based on the info in your original post that stated the fax guarantee had failed to transmit and the credit card had been declined.

as i said, i am glad that your guests have found a room (i realize how booked the Resort area is tonight) and i hope they have an enjoyable stay.

i know that a bad day "at the office" can feel overwhelming. hopefully the rest of the evening and tomorrow will be better.

peace.

[Morrigoon]

Mega:

For what it's worth, I think your experience with Mariott is an isolated event. That very same Mariott totally saved my prom night experience and earned my loyalty in a big way in the process.

Granted, it was '95, but I doubt a major convention hotel would fall off its service history that bad. Story was, a bunch of my friends were planning on going to DL the day after prom and had booked rooms in the area. So my prom date (relax, just a friend - Chernabog) and I booked a room with the Sheraton (not the Anaheim one, but another one nearby), and even added my dad's gold frequent guest number to it. So we drive down south, can't find the place, call the Sheraton 800-number to help us figure out where they're going. They say that there's no reservation and the rooms are booked! No attempt to help us get a room, either. Out of desperation we call the Marriott, make a reservation for their room/breakfast $99 deal, and drive down there. When we arrived, they looked for the reservation and it turns out the 800# person had booked it for "that night" (being as it was after midnight when I called and asked for a room "tonight"), meaning, he'd looked at the night AFTER I needed the room. Marriott was of course full for the night I really needed it, standing at their check-in counter.

So they located a "hospitality room", which is a room really used more for cocktail parties than anything (I'm guessing that it would open to the adjacent hotel room to form a suite, but was not in use that way that night). It had a pull-out couch in it. They automatically dropped 25% of the cost of the room, and said they'd get us a rollaway since we didn't want to share a bed.

We were already ecstatic that they'd at least given us a room that night, since they weren't really obligated (after all, Sheraton had created the problem), but Marriott went out of their way not only to find a way to accommodate us, but to make up for the "inconvenience" by dropping the price.

So THEN, they have trouble getting us a rollaway. We end up waiting about 45 minutes for them to find one. Without asking for it, they announce that they're dropping another $25 off the room price. So we paid $50 for an otherwise perfectly decent hotel room AND breakfast. All the way through the experience, they were totally courteous and apologetic.

And again, they didn't create the initial problem, they just created the solution.

So, yeah, I totally understand how you feel right now, given the stressful day, but if you pare off the bad guy at the hotel desk, a lot of the other problems were created by others (such as corporate not paying the bill on your card), and how the desk reacted was affected by the one bad guy. HOWEVER, Marriott also made sure that in the end your clients were happy.

And if your clients are happy, you get referrals.

So yeah, I hope you're not toally soured on the Marriott, because that's usually one of the highest on my list of hotel reccommendations for the Anaheim area.

By the way, when the hotels in Anaheim are totally booked up, check with the Embassy Suites in Buena Park (near Knott's). I think there's a shuttle to DL from there, and it's a nice place. Older Embassy Suites, pre-cookie cutter. Lots of spanish tile, bouganvillia, fountains. Peaceful place, I liked it the time I stayed there.