Marriott’s Broken Cancelation Policies

By: Ben Schlappig

Published: March 1, 2019

53 comments

I’ve been vocal about my frustrations with Marriott’s new loyalty program.

My issue isn’t even the program as such, but rather Marriott’s seeming inability to have it function properly. This seems to be an issue of Marriott’s IT being offensively bad, combined with Marriott giving hotels way too much leeway to just do whatever they want.

Over six months after a single program was formed (for all practical purposes) we’re still seeing a countless number of issues.

In this post I wanted to briefly touch on something that is only tangentially related to Marriott Bonvoy. About a week ago Steph wrote about how Marriott is requesting cash deposits for many refundable award stays, which seems a bit unreasonable to me.

But this seems to be part of a much bigger issue — what on earth is going on with Marriott’s cancelation policies? I’ve received no fewer than a dozen messages from readers per day lately asking for clarification on this stuff.

This isn’t just limited to award stays, but also applies to revenue stays. For example, I just tried to book a hotel and the confirmation page stated the following cancelation policy:

Changes to your reservation are not permitted. Please note that you may cancel your reservation for no charge until June 19, 2019. Please note that your prepayment for this special rate is non-refundable.

Here’s a screenshot, just in case you don’t believe that this is how the world’s largest hotel chain is displaying their cancelation policies:

This is only one example of the world’s largest hotel group displaying cancelation policies that can only be described as gibberish.

The odd thing is that this was never an issue in the past, but only in the past couple of weeks has this become a problem, so I have no clue who came in and said “meh, this is working too well, let’s see how we can screw this up.”

Marriott, please, please, please get your act together. This is embarrassing. I’m fine with Marriott Bonvoy not being Starwood Preferred Guest, I’d just love for the program to work the way it’s supposed to.

This isn’t “noise around the edges.”

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Deanna Guest

July 19, 2019, 5:58 pm

I recently cancelled my hotel stay and the hotels General Manager states that you must cancel your stay by 3:59pm (48 hours prior to check-in) though the bonvoy website states that cancellation must take place by 11:59pm two days prior (meaning if you stay on the 10th you cancel by 11:59pm on the 8th). They are refusing to refund my money as a result and corporate is useless and ultimately cannot and will not assist. First and last booking - I will stick with Hilton

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Timmy Guest

March 3, 2019, 4:10 pm

Yes something can be done. If stock analysts, industry analysts take such feedback from guests as above, (Many good ideas from everyone), and Marriott fails Wall Street, we can be sure Arne gets the heat from analyst and fund managers holding Marriott stock. The cancellation is an oxymoron. You can't cancel but you can. Hopefully they get it staightened out, because the other companies are not always pleasing either. Is anyone watching how Chris Nasseta operates? Hilton was a very friendly company, make a call and someone would really be helpful. Its not the same now, sometimes being lucky to get a good responsive person on the line. The squeeze is on, but raised voices can make a difference.

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Honest Abe Guest

March 3, 2019, 1:05 am

I have been so confused by these. The garbage English that exists for 'policies' in airline and hotel is an example where regulation should step in to mandate that humans can understand the meaning.

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Stuart Diamond

March 2, 2019, 11:13 am

*Not SLH, Design Hotels I meant.

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Ricardo Guest

March 2, 2019, 10:41 am

I booked a stay at the W Goa with points over New Year’s Eve and somehow missed the 24hour cancellation policy buried in the confirmation page. Apparently I had only 24 hours to cancel or else I was going to be charged the full cash equivalent. What’s the full cash equivalent you ask? Who knows since it was never stated at any point. I called the hotel directly and they didn’t know the cancellation policy. The hotel itself didn’t know it’s own policy... I called the platinum desk and they also didn’t know but said they would get back to me. They sent me an email the next day saying the hotel was non cancelable and sorry but I would be charged the full cash price if I wanted to cancel. I threatened litigation since at no point in the booking process was a cash price ever stated for me to agree to pay in lieu of points if I chose to cancel. They finally relented and canceled it. What a waste of time and energy. I now officially am going over to hilton

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