Marriott IT fails them again

[Jim Mc]

I just don't understand how a company the size of Marriott continues day after day, week after week, etc.... to have issues with their WEB page in one form or another. For weeks the points history was not working, now that's working and the Destinations escape page say select dates available, but you have to call to get what dates are available. I don't that and as ALWAYS the customer service person was very helpful, but she had to get me the list of five properties with all available dates. In the past I could see all dates, get a couple that work and then call and reserve.

Some one at Marriott needs to higher a competent WEB IT manager!

Thanks for listening to my rant....have a great evening.

 

[davidvel]

Maybe it was fixed but working for me right now. Never mind, I see no dates.

 

[dioxide45]

I just don't understand how a company the size of Marriott continues day after day, week after week, etc.... to have issues with their WEB page in one form or another.

The problem is that they are small potatoes when it comes to company size and can't attract the best IT talent. If you're great with IT, do you work for Google, Meta, Oracle or do you go and work for Marriott Vacation Club?

 

[daviator]

The problem is that they are small potatoes when it comes to company size and can't attract the best IT talent. If you're great with IT, do you work for Google, Meta, Oracle or do you go and work for Marriott Vacation Club?

There are plenty of competent IT folks out there. They don’t need Google-caliber folks. They just need competent. Even in Florida (sorry for the dig) I am sure there are plenty of competent folks. MVC just needs to hire some of them.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that they are using the Marriott (hotel) backend system, which is so ancient that it is written in COBOL, a computer language from the 1970s. So they probably need to have a certain amount of COBOL expertise within MVC, and anybody who knows COBOL is a senior citizen. But I don’t think MVC’s own systems run COBOL, they just have to talk to Marriott’s systems which do. So I suspect that MVC just doesn’t invest in sufficient competence in their IT people.

 

[dioxide45]

There are plenty of competent IT folks out there. They don’t need Google-caliber folks. They just need competent. Even in Florida (sorry for the dig) I am sure there are plenty of competent folks. MVC just needs to hire some of them.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that they are using the Marriott (hotel) backend system, which is so ancient that it is written in COBOL, a computer language from the 1970s. So they probably need to have a certain amount of COBOL expertise within MVC, and anybody who knows COBOL is a senior citizen. But I don’t think MVC’s own systems run COBOL, they just have to talk to Marriott’s systems which do. So I suspect that MVC just doesn’t invest in sufficient competence in their IT people.

You would think they could get them, but this is a problem that plagues a lot of mid tier companies. MVC isn't alone in this struggle.

I understand that they outsource their IT services. They may not be in Florida and a lot could even be offshore. I don't know that Marriott Vacations systems are in COBOL. They do interact with the Marriott International COBOL system, but I understand that Marriott Vacations has it's own IT infrastructure now with their own application database.

 

[jp10558]

You would think they could get them, but this is a problem that plagues a lot of mid tier companies. MVC isn't alone in this struggle.

I understand that they outsource their IT services. They may not be in Florida and a lot could even be offshore. I don't know that Marriott Vacations systems are in COBOL. They do interact with the Marriott International COBOL system, but I understand that Marriott Vacations has it's own IT infrastructure now with their own application database.

I maintain that this is a problem of investment by the company. You don't need (as @daviator said) the top 1% of IT people to get functional systems. Plus, there are lots of good people looking for work as big tech has laid off a bunch (if you believe that FAANG has the only good IT people). Not only that, not all competent people want to work for FAANG. Common "stupid" things that affect mid tier IT quality (not saying MVC has any specific issue here, but clearly they are having issues) are the following:

1. Pay / benefits / job satisfaction too low. If you're paying below market in whatever markets you're in, or even if you're paying market average, you will have trouble getting people if you are considered a bad place to work for the intangibles. You could solve this by raising salary offers and benefits packages, but you also could consider changing culture to be more appealing, including better work/life balance, fully remote work, etc etc.
2. They've decided to take the fully remote work and just outsource everything. This usually is a problem because whenever you're not in direct control of the unit the employees aren't yours. They don't really care how well you rate their individual output, they care only insofar as their companies management applies bonuses or layoffs in terms of contracts coming and going. This is how you get crap service by SLA. This is literally IMO hiring a whole unit of people who already "quietly quit" or are applying Union "work to rule". In other situations this would be considered bad. On top of that, you're paying significantly less to employees for the same spend on your end - the outsourcing company will eat a huge percentage of the pay. So you're also stepping down the quality latter in most cases.
3. Not investing in the systems - then you take sub par or even median competence employees - but you ignore them, you refuse to buy needed upgrades etc. Just like deferring on maintenance of a resort eventually leads to a big bill and a lot of construction all at once or a compete failure of the resort, so does deferring IT upgrades. You can have the best team of mechanics in the world, but if they are only given a 1970s yugo with 300,000 on the clock to keep running, it probably will spend more and more time in the shop vs functioning. Especially if you won't even buy new components but insist they "repair" anything that breaks.
4. Bad strategic goals - if you keep changing directions, overhauling the system, moving cloud providers every year on contract renewal, etc etc etc - you're spending what tech time you do have running in place.
5. Bad strategic operations - you don't listen to what experts you have hired and so end up not developing HA clusters or rolling releases, or reconciliation strategies that work live. You don't manage build pipelines or CI/CD workflows etc. I think some part of this explains all the TS companies 12-24 hour weekly/monthly outages - they have no system to "do it live" so they're still doing an app deploy or whatever like it's 2000 and taking the whole thing down, reloading the data in the new app, and bringing it back up. Some of this could be interacting with an ancient batch system using COBOL or really anything that only generates a status once a day via a long report or something. But even that has ways around it - there's stories online about how various companies figured it out. And of course, updating that system to handle more real time updates is also possible.

It all comes back to ways of not investing in their operations. However, I think it's also the case that there's no competition doing it better, so I see why they don't see an ROI on fixing it. Until someone pulls an uber on them, they're not going to change IMHO.

 

[geist1223]

This seems to be a common problem to Timeshare Companies. These companies do not make money with their Computer Systems. They make money selling Memberships. Once people discover the Computer Issues they have already joined. The top leaders all focus on selling Memberships not in providing adequate services to current Members. Apparently Wall Street does not care about Owner Satisfaction even though that can affect future sales.

 

[Ken555]

You would think they could get them, but this is a problem that plagues a lot of mid tier companies. MVC isn't alone in this struggle.

I understand that they outsource their IT services. They may not be in Florida and a lot could even be offshore. I don't know that Marriott Vacations systems are in COBOL. They do interact with the Marriott International COBOL system, but I understand that Marriott Vacations has it's own IT infrastructure now with their own application database.

It's a race to the bottom for many of those companies, including Marriott. But comparing the talent needed to Google or other similar companies misses the mark completely. We’re not talking rocket science here.

 

[jp10558]

This seems to be a common problem to Timeshare Companies. These companies do not make money with their Computer Systems. They make money selling Memberships. Once people discover the Computer Issues they have already joined. The top leaders all focus on selling Memberships not in providing adequate services to current Members. Apparently Wall Street does not care about Owner Satisfaction even though that can affect future sales.

I mean, lots of things about TS companies would make you think it would hurt their sales, but the high pressure sales techniques overcome all of those.

 

[dioxide45]

I maintain that this is a problem of investment by the company. You don't need (as @daviator said) the top 1% of IT people to get functional systems. Plus, there are lots of good people looking for work as big tech has laid off a bunch (if you believe that FAANG has the only good IT people). Not only that, not all competent people want to work for FAANG. Common "stupid" things that affect mid tier IT quality (not saying MVC has any specific issue here, but clearly they are having issues) are the following:

1. Pay / benefits / job satisfaction too low. If you're paying below market in whatever markets you're in, or even if you're paying market average, you will have trouble getting people if you are considered a bad place to work for the intangibles. You could solve this by raising salary offers and benefits packages, but you also could consider changing culture to be more appealing, including better work/life balance, fully remote work, etc etc.
2. They've decided to take the fully remote work and just outsource everything. This usually is a problem because whenever you're not in direct control of the unit the employees aren't yours. They don't really care how well you rate their individual output, they care only insofar as their companies management applies bonuses or layoffs in terms of contracts coming and going. This is how you get crap service by SLA. This is literally IMO hiring a whole unit of people who already "quietly quit" or are applying Union "work to rule". In other situations this would be considered bad. On top of that, you're paying significantly less to employees for the same spend on your end - the outsourcing company will eat a huge percentage of the pay. So you're also stepping down the quality latter in most cases.
3. Not investing in the systems - then you take sub par or even median competence employees - but you ignore them, you refuse to buy needed upgrades etc. Just like deferring on maintenance of a resort eventually leads to a big bill and a lot of construction all at once or a compete failure of the resort, so does deferring IT upgrades. You can have the best team of mechanics in the world, but if they are only given a 1970s yugo with 300,000 on the clock to keep running, it probably will spend more and more time in the shop vs functioning. Especially if you won't even buy new components but insist they "repair" anything that breaks.
4. Bad strategic goals - if you keep changing directions, overhauling the system, moving cloud providers every year on contract renewal, etc etc etc - you're spending what tech time you do have running in place.
5. Bad strategic operations - you don't listen to what experts you have hired and so end up not developing HA clusters or rolling releases, or reconciliation strategies that work live. You don't manage build pipelines or CI/CD workflows etc. I think some part of this explains all the TS companies 12-24 hour weekly/monthly outages - they have no system to "do it live" so they're still doing an app deploy or whatever like it's 2000 and taking the whole thing down, reloading the data in the new app, and bringing it back up. Some of this could be interacting with an ancient batch system using COBOL or really anything that only generates a status once a day via a long report or something. But even that has ways around it - there's stories online about how various companies figured it out. And of course, updating that system to handle more real time updates is also possible.

It all comes back to ways of not investing in their operations. However, I think it's also the case that there's no competition doing it better, so I see why they don't see an ROI on fixing it. Until someone pulls an uber on them, they're not going to change IMHO.

It seems somewhat like a cart and horse scenario. Many of these companies don't want to or simply can't pay more for more talent. Many outsource their IT work to third party vendors that use offshore IT workers. This makes the cost difference between what they are paying and what they might have to pay if they hired staff to work in office or even remote in the USA. Kind of a catch 22. It is all about dollars and cents. They aren't willing to pay more because that doesn't make investors happy. For timeshare companies, customer facing websites are also a cost center and not a profit producing item.

 

[geist1223]

My oldest Son for a number of years owed his own IT/IS Company. Did work for Harvard, Liberty Mutual, Samsung, Charter Comunications, etc. He critized many large American Companies. They would hire 100 "Computer Engineers" in India for less than his firm would charge. But they got what they paid for. His Company would meet with the Senior Leadership to see what they thought they wanted; the small folks to see what they thought they wanted; and, the actual end users to see what they needed. After all this input they would design what they thought was needed by all parties. Every line of Code was written from scratch - no modules. Then they stayed with the Project until all Glitches, etc were eliminated. During this Process they had the different parties try the System.

He said that developing new programs was not a great challenge. He also got tired of the Business and dealing with the Corporate types. He has found great satisfaction in teaching at a Private School where the kids are there to learn and excel. He enjoys the challenge. He admitted the financial reward is a lot less. But that the spiritual reward and satisfaction was huge.

 

[RebelR]

I only recently became both a Marriott and HGVC owner. While the Marriott site has been underwhelming at best with even seemingly easy things requiring phone calls like getting weeks booked by the prior owner for you to reflect properly (week owner not points), I find that the HGVC site is easy to use and book/change reservations. I was also surprised to learn that the destination escapes can only be booked via phone as HGVC seems to update their specials every month or so and those get immediately reflected in the points booking values.

 

[TolmiePeak]

The problem is that they are small potatoes when it comes to company size and can't attract the best IT talent. If you're great with IT, do you work for Google, Meta, Oracle or do you go and work for Marriott Vacation Club?

Well maybe they could attract better talent if they gave them a few timeshare weeks and chairman's level status with MVC.....

 

[tahoe]

IMO, the problem is there's litte incentive for MVC to spend $$$ on the website. The customers are all locked into annual maintennance fees.

 

[TolmiePeak]

IMO, the problem is there's litte incentive for MVC to spend $$$ on the website. The customers are all locked into annual maintennance fees.

With better IT couldn't they get rid of 80% of their employees?

 

[daviator]

With better IT couldn't they get rid of 80% of their employees?

I'm sure they are working on replacing the front line people with AI. They've already been experimenting with that at the properties (and I don't think it's been a particularly good experience for guests/owners.)

 

[davidvel]

IMO, the problem is there's litte incentive for MVC to spend $$$ on the website. The customers are all locked into annual maintennance fees.

Correct. The fixed % management fee provides no reason for any incremental spending on their dime for core management expense. The only reason they barely scrape by with their 1990s web tech is so they can keep selling to existing owners. No other reason whatsoever. Still surprised MVC hasn't claimed this is not some expense that they can earn an additional 10% on. I guess, even for them shockingly, this is a bridge too far.

So sad how so many owners think that MVC owes anything directly to them, as if they own some part of MVC.

 

[daviator]

Correct. The fixed % management fee provides no reason for any incremental spending on their dime for core management expense. The only reason they barely scrape by with their 1990s web tech is so they can keep selling to existing owners. No other reason whatsoever. Still surprised MVC hasn't claimed this is not some expense that they can earn an additional 10% on. I guess, even for them shockingly, this is a bridge too far.

So sad how so many owners think that MVC owes anything directly to them, as if they own some part of MVC.

Pretty sure that every property's budget includes a line item for IT and reservations services which essentially reimburses MVC for the costs of operating their reservations system. Am I wrong? I don't think so.

It's pretty much a no-lose business for MVC on the operations and management side of things.

 

[TolmiePeak]

I'm sure they are working on replacing the front line people with AI. They've already been experimenting with that at the properties (and I don't think it's been a particularly good experience for guests/owners.)

I wish they would eliminate the check-in desk. Why can't I check-in using the app?

 

[vacationtime1]

I wish they would eliminate the check-in desk. Why can't I check-in using the app?

Because the app won't push you to sign up for an "owners' update".

 

[WBP]

Frequently, when MVC/MVW responds to claims/allegations of failureSSS on their technology front, be it their website, app, or phones at owner services, and they look for sympathy, i say hogwash, and I remind MVC/MVW that they have been at this timeshare business for 40+ years, and they’ve spent millions of (owners) dollars on their technology infrastructure, and they still can’t make their technology function, or interface, reliably, with their customers.

In my opinon, all of this is a failure of MVC/MVW’s leadership, and, in particular, their Executive Leadership.

I say, enough with the excuses, MVC/MVW.

 

[dioxide45]

I wish they would eliminate the check-in desk. Why can't I check-in using the app?

The check in process, IMO, takes way too long. I don't need the chit chat, "is this your first time here", kinda stuff. Just get me my keys so I can get on with my vacation. I don't need anyone to explain the activities schedule to me. Ask if I know where I am going and if I say no, then point out my building and unit on the map. Many guests have been returning to the same resort year after year. They don't need this stuff to slow the process down for them and everyone behind them in the check in line.

 

[TolmiePeak]

The check in process, IMO, takes way too long. I don't need the chit chat, "is this your first time here", kinda stuff. Just get me my keys so I can get on with my vacation. I don't need anyone to explain the activities schedule to me. Ask if I know where I am going and if I say no, then point out my building and unit on the map. Many guests have been returning to the same resort year after year. They don't need this stuff to slow the process down for them and everyone behind them in the check in line.

Exactly correct. It took them 3 to 5 minutes to check me in at Ko Olina. Complete waste of time.

 

[TolmiePeak]

Because the app won't push you to sign up for an "owners' update".

The front desk people at the Marriott resorts I have been to don't even do that. They have someone with some "special offers" that will sign you up. I'm still upset at Ko Olina for only offering me 30,000 Bonvoy points for an update. They wouldn't budge. Maybe my name is flagged in their system or something like it is at HGVC.

 

[Ken555]

The check in process, IMO, takes way too long. I don't need the chit chat, "is this your first time here", kinda stuff. Just get me my keys so I can get on with my vacation. I don't need anyone to explain the activities schedule to me. Ask if I know where I am going and if I say no, then point out my building and unit on the map. Many guests have been returning to the same resort year after year. They don't need this stuff to slow the process down for them and everyone behind them in the check in line.

A few times I've been blunt, and simply said I'm tired and please just give me my keys. Inevitably, they get insulted, turn sullen, give a fake smile, then take five minutes typing slowly only to give me a poor room location. I've learned not to do this. Of course, I know they don't assign the rooms at time of check-in, but still…when it takes them five minutes to get the info, I really have no idea what their doing, though at my last visit to a property the front desk was actually chatting via text to their room allocation team who moved me to a better location, so who knows how long that has been happening (and may not be at each resort). Anyway, now I am the one to give the fake smile and greeting, no matter how tired I am, at least until I get my keys.

Anyway, I agree with those who believe we should be able to check in online, and they should have a packet of keys and info ready for us to pickup from a greeter who just verifies ID. Car rentals do this without a problem, and I am sure timeshares could as well if they wanted to, but they don't. After all, Marriott now offers in all check-in for hotels.

Sadly, I don't ever expect to see this happen.