Starwood Preferred Guest - 2008 C & P removed ahead of 4th March Category Change

Its 1st March today and I noticed a couple of hotels in SE Asia have removed their C&P availability for the entire year 2008.

While I am still able to use points ahead of the 4th March category change, I was hoping to use C&P to stretch the use of my limitted starpoints.

While Starwood was nice enough with their email to encourage us to book before 4th March, I felt betrayed when some properties decided to remove all their C&P availability a few days ahead of that dateline knowing some of us would take advantage of the lower rates :mad:

IIRC this has been discussed here before. Do a search. William assured us that there was no systematic removal of C&P availability before the category change.
Maybe you tell us what hotels and dates you are looking at?

Its 1st March today and I noticed a couple of hotels in SE Asia have removed their C&P availability for the entire year 2008.

While I am still able to use points ahead of the 4th March category change, I was hoping to use C&P to stretch the use of my limitted starpoints.

While Starwood was nice enough with their email to encourage us to book before 4th March, I felt betrayed when some properties decided to remove all their C&P availability a few days ahead of that dateline knowing some of us would take advantage of the lower rates :mad:

Mario,

I think it's important to point out the SPG online booking tool for C&P is not reliable at all. For example, I was going to book St. Regis Singapore on C&P online for 2 nights but the web keeps telling me the C&P is not available. So I picked up the phone and of course I could book 2 nights, on the exact dates I want, no hassle. I know SPG's website is not very good but at least it's functional and easy to use most of the time but I really wish I could say the same about Hilton's website however, which is far worse.

When in doubt, always call SPG up to confirm the lack of availability on C&P because chances are, they will tell you otherwise.

William assured us that there was no systematic removal of C&P availability before the category change.

Looks like William is wrong, or at least the hotels are not playing by the rule.

I am looking at several hotels in SE Asia; for a start try finding C&P availability at The Laguna Bali for any date in 2008. I wanted to stay in March and June, and as of 2 days ago it was available for most parts of the year. Now no C&P for all of 2008 and this is not the only property with C&P vanishing .....

And I did check with SPG call centre, no C&P availability but they offered to book me on points. I am quite sure the hotels withdrew the C&P availability; if only I had ignored the 4th March dateline on SPG email, and did everything by 29th Feb which we originally thought was the cut-off point.

Still widely available at Le Meridian Jakarta and Sheraton Bandung, both of which are going up, so maybe it's just the hotel you were looking at rather than a system wide issue.

Still widely available at Le Meridian Jakarta and Sheraton Bandung, both of which are going up, so maybe it's just the hotel you were looking at rather than a system wide issue.

You are correct, its not system wide. Thats why I believe its the act of some hotels and not SPG policy; I couldnt believe they could be so "cheap" to pull something like this !