SPG: Starwood Hotels & Resorts

The total redesign that was done recently has made this app nearly impossible to use. It’s so hard to figure out where to go to do anything. For example, clicking the little arrow on a reservation isn’t where you go to cancel or modify. You have to hit the word “More” Under it, which brings up a pop up with actions. It looks like it’s just describing what the arrow is for, but the arrow takes you to a pretty useless screen with hotel info (like local attractions) and no actions. I get notification counts on the app, but can’t find where to go to see or clear them. Overall, just very difficult to navigate, totally unintuitive, and hard to actually do things. I really hope someone at Marriott sees this and maybe they start again with something that’s trying to be less slick looking and more useful. This app is totally useless because of how hard it is to figure out how to use.

I used this app religiously and love Starwood hotels. Not sure I’m so fond of Marriott if this is their doing. The new app is horrible. Old app used to have points and per night stay $ amount when searching just automatically available now it seems like I have to do two separate searches if I want to see points versus per night stay $ amount. Time waster. Also why are my points doubled suddenly but so are the points to stay per night. For example it used to be about 12k points to stay at a Sheraton for a night and now it’s 35k. And yes my account points have doubled to kind of keep things in line here but why do that to begin with? It made me think for a second that I actually had 35k points and could stay 2 nights at a Sheraton until I searched to book and saw everything had doubled. Idk I miss the old app is was perfect to me. :(

I’ve been an avid user of the app for as long as I have been an SPG member. I’ve seen the enhancements and bug fixes over the years, so I have a baseline of quality and usability for the app on its own. Introducing iPhone X: Here is where I, as an IT Solutions Consultant/Developer, see inconsistencies and opportunities to improve. For starters, the menu options that are proximate to the notch have small touch areas. Apps are supposed to make tap actions easier, not more difficult by requiring precision when tapping an element. There are also issues with truncation, such as the stays menu. Go ahead and check it out in the app. From the Stays menu (if you have at least one stay), the stay instance is truncated. You can verify this by pulling down, which displays the stay instance in its entirety. Repeat from the Today menu. The “WELCOME, <Guest first name>” element is truncated and can be replicated by pulling down. Then there’s inconsistencies with the styling that’s clear when accessing different features. For Stays, there is a black horizontal spacer; for other areas like My Account, a purple background fills from the notch area. There are shortcomings with functionality others have mentioned so I am mentioning only UI concerns. The SPG app has an excellent opportunity to lead in the hospitality space. Can we clean up the UI so that guests can enjoy a unified aesthetic?