Fairmont President's Club - Guaranteed Room Benefit

I have to be in Montreal next week, and upon discovering many of the downtown hotels sold out on Wednesday, I thought I'd try the guaranteed room benefit of the FPC Platinum membership. Upon giving them my FPC number, suddenly they were happy to find a room for me. Excellent!

So now I'm curious. Where do they come up with the room? Does the hotel hold back some rooms for this purpose, or do they have to cancel someone elses reservation to make room for me?

Indeed a nice benefit, that´s one the perks that distinguishes Plat from Premier members.

Basically hotels will often accept bookings for more rooms than they have (airlines do the same) as there are no-shows/last minute cancellations etc.
The number of rooms they´re willing to oversell obviously depends on the data and experience revenue management has collected over the years, but it´s not uncommon for bookings to exceed capacity by 2%-5%.

If no rooms are bookable at all on the Fairmont website, the hotel is most likely already oversold.
They may have enough rooms in the end, and if they don´t they will "walk" some non-status guest (hotels use different criteria like "who checked in last?" / "who payed the lowest rate?" etc.) That person will be moved to another hotel and typically the hotel will pay for the first night, provide transportation to/from the hotel and may or may not provide additional compensation, but I don´t know Fairmont´s exact policy (if there is a policy, each hotel may have a different policy)

Thanks... that's good to know.

Indeed, when I tried to book, there was no availablity of any kind at the Queen Elizabeth on the Fairmont website. No basic rooms, no suites, nothing at all offered. I called, and they said they were full. It was only when I mentioned I was Platinum when they said they would be happy to find me a room.

When I'm logged into the Fairmont site, it knows my membership status, so it would be nice if the booking engine could take that into account and process the guaranteed room benefit at that time without the need for a phone call. But, hey, I got a room, so I'm not complaining (unlike some poor unsuspecting guy who is about to be displaced).