Best Western is on track to make their app completely useless. It started when they stopped showing a map for your search results. This is due to bad programming of the app. If you have a small screen device, like a smartphone or smaller tablets, you won’t see a map. I reported that to Best Western and they didn’t understand the issue and they still haven’t grasped the issue until now. I doubt that they fixed it in the newest app version they released on December 15, 2022.
This “new” app is unusable if you have android and have “Developer Options” activated in the settings of your phone. As soon as you open the app, it gives you a warning message and then shuts down the app.
Theoretically you can turn off Developer Options in your phone. But why should Best Western dictate how you use your phone and what settings you can make. Developer Options can help to speed up your phone by removing transition effects between windows and apps but now Best Western wants to tell you that you can’t do that. Developer options have many useful tweaks you might want to make your phone to improve performance and/or stability.
I sent Best Western an E-Mail, reached out on social and tried to explain it to an agent on the hotline. From Customer Service I got transferred to Best Western Rewards department. Their solutions are to re-install the app, which in my experience never helped for any issue I encountered, but worth a shot and take the device in to the phone company. That are the same answers when I told them that the map is missing in their app. The phone company, or any mobile repair shop can’t fix the Best Western App. Alternatively, I was told to use the PC to make bookings. Then, the question is, why do they even develop an app, if Best Western doesn’t want their customers to use the app.
The agent also kept insisting that they don’t have an IT department when I told them to forward that issue to the right place. The agent also mentioned that NOBODY has a way to reach the developer of the app. If you think about it, someone is developing an app for you, and you have no way of reaching them, but they can do with your app and name whatever they want? That’s a pretty scary situation but the agent didn’t care much about it either.
The Best Western To Go App is the only app on my phone that “thinks” Developer Options are a risk to my security. None of the other big hotel chains or even banking apps worry about developer options.
Now it gets even scarier! For testing purposes, I deactivated Developer Options in my phone’s settings. Once I started to do a search for hotels, it asked me for location permission, which is okay, so it can display “nearby” hotels. It’s a useful feature and I understand it needs location permission. After I allowed that, a very scary request popped up. The app asks me to allow Best Western to track my activity across other companies’ websites and apps. The only choices I have are to allow and to ask the app to not allow. But if they hardcoded it in, the app would still track my activity as there is no way of denying it.
WARNING: Uninstall the app immediately from your phone. Also start contacting Best Western to uphold their privacy policy and not spy on us.
While looking through their privacy policy, they even state that they don’t care if you have your browser set to “Do Not Track”.
8. Online Tracking. We do not currently recognize automated browser signals regarding tracking mechanisms, which may include “Do Not Track” instructions.
This leads me to the conclusion, that they also have no way of recognizing when you ask the app to not allow tracking you in the Best Western app.
The main issue here is probably that Best Western is going a cheap route and their app is not much more than a tweaked browser. Pretty bad for a company that size.
Best Western used to be a good program. They have many great locations in regions where you can’t find another chain hotel or just chain hotels with not as good of a property than the Best Western hotel. As of now, I am done with future stays at Best Western.
Peter has a passion for Traveling, Photography, and Geocaching. These are the best ingredients for amazing adventures all over the globe. “Traveling is fun, no matter if you stay in a luxury hotel or travel like a backpacker.” Peter shares his experiences on his Blog www.gatetoadventures.com
Some of Peter’s photos are published on corporate websites, in-flight magazines, travel guides, and much more.
