Starwood Preferred Guest - Accessible Room on Award Stay - Will it hurt my chances up a Plat upgrade?

I have a FWN award stay booked at the W Washington DC for this coming Sat. & Sun. night. When I called SPG to book the reservation they told me that the only availability they had was for a wheelchair accessible room. I took the room because I wanted that hotel for the FWN. The Plat. agent told me she would put a note in the reservation stating that we did not actually need the accessible room and that they should change it if others are available. Yesterday when I checked SPG to see if there were any regular Wonderful rooms available for award redemption it showed availability. My confirmation however still shows the accessible room booked.

Question is.....should I call and try to change to the Wonderful room or stay with the accessible room? I'm concerned that the accessible room booking might hurt my chances of a Plat. upgrade if the agent doesn't see the comment about us actually not needing that type of room. Thoughts?

I have a FWN award stay booked at the W Washington DC for this coming Sat. & Sun. night. When I called SPG to book the reservation they told me that the only availability they had was for a wheelchair accessible room. I took the room because I wanted that hotel for the FWN. The Plat. agent told me she would put a note in the reservation stating that we did not actually need the accessible room and that they should change it if others are available. Yesterday when I checked SPG to see if there were any regular Wonderful rooms available for award redemption it showed availability. My confirmation however still shows the accessible room booked.

Question is.....should I call and try to change to the Wonderful room or stay with the accessible room? I'm concerned that the accessible room booking might hurt my chances of a Plat. upgrade if the agent doesn't see the comment about us actually not needing that type of room. Thoughts?

From my experience, it shouldn't.

I've booked accessible rooms and have been upgraded. I put the information in the notes section.

I second Cheap Elite's comments.

Some low rates on spg.com seem to book into accessible rooms, and that has not hurt my upgrade opportunities. That said, I think offering accessible rooms at the cheapest rate defeats the purpose of having said room available for disabled customers (unless the property holds back standard rooms for cheap non-disabled folks booked into accessible rooms :p).

I have booked Accessible rooms as last resort availability with awards, and like CE & Totoro, I've never had it hurt my suite upgrade; however, if I found a standard room that came available, that was not ADA compliant, I would switch just for the simple fact that I did not want to take a room that someone NEEDED.

I have booked Accessible rooms as last resort availability with awards, and like CE & Totoro, I've never had it hurt my suite upgrade; however, if I found a standard room that came available, that was not ADA compliant, I would switch just for the simple fact that I did not want to take a room that someone NEEDED.

Exactly. The times that I've been booked into an "accessible" room was always by a person on the Gold Elite line. But they noted to move me to a standard room if they became available and I also checked myself. I would feel horrible if someone really needed an accessible room and I was the cause of them not receiving it.

I have a FWN award stay booked at the W Washington DC for this coming Sat. & Sun. night. When I called SPG to book the reservation they told me that the only availability they had was for a wheelchair accessible room. I took the room because I wanted that hotel for the FWN. The Plat. agent told me she would put a note in the reservation stating that we did not actually need the accessible room and that they should change it if others are available. Yesterday when I checked SPG to see if there were any regular Wonderful rooms available for award redemption it showed availability. My confirmation however still shows the accessible room booked.

Question is.....should I call and try to change to the Wonderful room or stay with the accessible room? I'm concerned that the accessible room booking might hurt my chances of a Plat. upgrade if the agent doesn't see the comment about us actually not needing that type of room. Thoughts?

Just looked and they're still showing Fabulous Rooms and Fantastic Suites for today - I'd ask for one of those at check-in. I asked for (and got with no trouble) a Fantastic Suite and it was well worth it.

Just looked and they're still showing Fabulous Rooms and Fantastic Suites for today - I'd ask for one of those at check-in. I asked for (and got with no trouble) a Fantastic Suite and it was well worth it.

I saw that too but so far my Platinum upgrade showing on SPG.com is a one category upgrade to a Spectacular room. I had issues with SPG Plat. upgrades in past years and moved stays to Hilton because I rarely got a suite upgrade even though they were available. Will see what happens when we arrive. I hate having to ask/beg at check-in. Why not just follow the program like they are supposed to? SO gets annoyed when I always push the issue at check-in. Had to promise a couple of years ago not to always start off a stay in a bad mood because of the hotels lack of upgrades even though they were available.

Just as with those empty disabled parking places, vacant "Handi-capped accessible" units (by law, 5% of total) in public housing, etc., the rooms configured for the disabled in hotels are less often rented for the planned purpose than were expected from the demands and federal pressure, and hotels are likely to offer them to award and special rate guests.

Right now, there's a lawsuit brewing because a family with small children was assigned to a unneeded handicapped-configured room in a big city/big name hotel, one of the children fell from the elevated "handicapped' toilet and suffered a serious head injury - one of those unintended consequences of good-doing.