Starwood Preferred Guest - Reason to Complain?

Hi All,
I made gold last year and thanks to the latest promo will hopefully hit Platinum this year.

I have recently returned from a trip to China where I stayed at the Sheraton Skyline before and after my trip.

I was with a colleague who was not gold and he was checked to a recently rennovated room, I was suprised as a gold that I was not offered a recently updated room as this is a gold privaledge.

I asked upon checkin and they shrugged and said that they could not do anything, however, my companion checked in about 2 hours after me on the way out and got a rennovated room.

Do you think that this is cause to complain? Any advice would be greatly appreciated...

With airport area hotels, various rooms end up being available at odd times -- not like your typical property. It's possible the room your companion got two hours later was not ready when you arrived. It's hard to tell.

Having said that, I definitely would have pursued the matter beyond the shrug and standard "there's nothing I can do." I would have asked very specifically, "this is really the very best you can do for me as one of your SPG Gold members, as it is not satisfactory for me?" Then I'd ask for the manager on duty and politely explain my concerns and ask for his/her help in searching for another room.

The problem with formally complaining now is that you don't really know what else was available at that particular point. It would be easy for the hotel to respond that "it was the best we had at the time" and it would be difficult to prove otherwise. Still, I'd send a note to corporate customer services (e-mail address in the sticky thread at the top of this forum) and let them know of your dissatisfaction.

What many people around here do if they're not happy with the room they ended up with is call SPG Gold reservations from their room and ask what is available at that hotel for the night. If there is ample availability, ask them to call and find out if renovated rooms are available for the night. If so, the SPG person can probably help you get switched to one.

It's a fair amount of hassle and a slight increase in blood pressure, so unless the room is really bad I just won't go to the effort. But, I'll talk to the manager, let corporate customer service know, and I'll do what you did, report it here so that other people can avoid the same experience. More importantly, though, it will be a very long time before I ever go back. At some point that has to begin catching up with these properties.

I agree with everything "AZ Travels the World" said, but I'll add one thing.

IMHO, if a better room is not ready, but is scheduled to be ready later in the day, the front desk should alert us of this. It should be our option to delay our check-in and get the better room, or check-in now and take what's available now.

I'm not saying this is a blood pressure raising event or anything like that, but if it were me, I would have spoken to the manager about it and asked for 500 starpoints as compensation. I probably would not have bothered with changing my room.

When I was at the Dom Hotel in Koeln, they told me I was already upgraded to Corner Suite but that it was not ready because I got there at something like 7AM. They offered me other rooms as they became available, but I simply waited until the Corner was ready.