I have stayed at a bunch of hotels in the last six months and come to the conclusion that price, brand, and reviews have no relation at all with quality.

Lots of brand variants which are likely franchises without the absolute control that a successful chain like McDonald's enforces.

Did you discover any reliable indicators for how good the stay would be?

The staff turnover in 95% of hotels is so high, you need reviews from at least a few recent guests to be able to predict anything.

I mostly look at the most recent reviews, and found them useful if not definitive.

Having been affected by this personally, I don't think Marriott cares about their brand at this point as they have achieved relative monopoly status. There are plenty of other horrible things they've accomplished in the last few years besides this. It makes me want to watch out for CitizenM similarly, because it's increasingly unclear what Marriott's actual role in your stay even is anymore.

The term monopoly means nothing if Marriott is one.

Not only does Marriott not own 95% of hotels with their brands, but in any given area, you can almost certainly find a competing Hilton/IHG/Choice/Hyatt brand.

It’s about as competitive as a market can get. What you probably are not aware of is a location where half or more hotels of the above brands are owned by the same people, and they franchise all the brands and choose all the prices. But even that is relatively rare.

I took a long road trip this summer and felt like I had plenty of options. My cumulative stays ended up: 1) Hilton 2) IHG 3) Choice 4) camping 5) AirBnB

My Hyatt and Marriott experiences sucked...

Incredible, given the hurdles Marriott asks franchisors to jump through.

A good franchise will bring in X million in profits and a bad one will bring in XYZ million in reputational damage.

A good unicorn will bring in XYZ billion[1] in profits and a bad one will bring in XYZ million in reputational damage.

Which is exactly why franchise operators get put through the wringer, while 'pod hotel but with an app' startups get the red carpet treatment.

---

[1] Yes, I know that is bullshit, but I'm not an exec, I don't get paid to be wildly optimistic.

I get a big red popup saying that Sonder is no longer affiliated with Marriott?

Not getting that here, but some images are returning 404 errors. Somewhere, someone is probably trying to scrub the Mariott site manually.

Several days later, the purge seems to be complete:

"Sorry, we can't find the page you requested.

You may have received this message because this page you seek is no longer available on Marriott website."