Timeline

May 2015: A complaint in an internet forum at FlyerTalk.com is titled, “The Idiots who Design Marriott Rooms,” created by a user who says they have stayed at the San Francisco airport Marriott for 20 years and for the first time got a room without a desk. The thread eventually grows to more than 380 posts.

December 2015: National sports writer Dan Wetzel writes a blog titled “What happened to the desk in my hotel room?” after finding his Marriott room in Charlotte, N.C., had a small, ill-fitting table but no desk or chair. The post gains traction on social media, including among fellow traveling writers, and he includes the topic in a podcast with a fellow sports writer. September 2016: Marriott says it has plans to add desks on wheels, which can be moved around the room for other uses, as part of renovations at 50 hotels by the end of the year and 108 in all.