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Yesterday, I wrote the introduction to my most recent trip report. I wrote it because, at the time, I was sitting in my hotel room without any plans. There was no reason to believe that I would attach anything else to the trip report. That changed on my drive from San Antonio today. The weather that was passing through Wichita Falls (where I live) was only to produce rain, but that was replaced by a day full of snow. I decided to drive as far as I could and get a room for the night.
There was a lot of rain on the I-35W corridor, but I managed to make it to Waco before I had refuel. During the refuel, I decided to check hotel availability in Fort Worth. I found an Aloft Hotel (Starwood Preferred Guest Property) in downtown Fort Worth. The hotel opened in August 2018. This would make it one of the newer hotels that I have visited. The property was a category 5, which meant that I would be able to use my annual free night certificate from my Marriott Credit Card.
I searched and searched on the Marriott app but I could not book the hotel. It kept taking me to Starwood’s website which wanted me to pay $170 or 25,000 points.
I tried, unsuccessfully, for 30 minutes. I even reached out on Twitter.
I grew increasingly frustrated and decided to call Marriott to reserve the room. After talking to the Marriott representative for three minutes, it was clear that this issue could not be resolved. The Marriott agent could not book the room because Marriott and Starwood were still operating on two systems. Great. I was then transferred over to Starwood’s Platinum Premier Line. After some formalities (identity verification and credit card for incidentals), the room was booked.
Final Word
The process was a bit more complicated than I would have liked but it was completed in less than 15 minutes. Marriott and Starwood are obviously still working through issues, but there seems to be processes in place to handle occurrences such as this.
