Nancy sent a message to Arne M. Sorenson – President and Chief Executive Officer of Marriott International, Inc. – Email Address that said:
Dear Mr. Sorenson,
I am writing to express my profound disappointment with the treatment we have received from The Residence Inn at National Harbor, MD. In March 2016, as the Global Event Manager for AccessData, I booked a room block for ten employees attending the ILTACON conference at the Gaylord National Harbor.
On August 24 we received an email from the property coordinator at The Residence Inn that due to an overflow issue we were being moved to the Springhill location in Alexandria. The message said they were being proactive in letting us know well before the conference so we could inform our attendees. Two working days before the conference starts on the 29th is not advance notice when you have employees coming from all over the United States that must be informed. And the property they wanted to relocate us to is not convenient at all, requiring shuttles in DC traffic at peak hours. The compensation was paying one night of our lodgings and ONE day of shuttle service. Which of course, is no help really for a four day event.
No one would explain to us why this was happening--they just kept saying it was an overflow situation directed by the Gaylord Convention Services. Finally after 3 phone calls and our VP calling, I received a call from the General Manager. He finally admitted what had happened and it was something Ive never experienced in 30+ years of event management.
They purposely overbooked the group blocks in case there were cancellations! He said historically that people cancelled their block reservations for this conference and they were hedging their bets that it would happen again--but it didn't. He said they were moving other group room blocks as well.
We are profoundly disappointed with the handling of this situation and the attempt to hide the real reason. We did not accept the offer to move to the Springhill location and the Marriott just lost $25,300 of income, plus whatever else would have been spent on property at the restaurants, etc. We took our business to Hilton.
We are advising our employees worldwide not to book reservations at any Marriott property. And, we will not be booking any events or meetings with Marriott going forward.
Kind regards,
Nancy
