Post your Diamond Upgrade Successes

Well it IS a published benefit from Choice. Actually had one so here goes! Appleton, WI Cambria Suites. Booked a double queen suite, at check in Diamond was recognized and was offered an upgrade to a King Tower Suite with a proper seperate bedroom. I understand from the FD that most Cambrias, while having a very standard room inventory, do have a couple of one bedroom suites. Interstingly enough the FD also offered they were at about 85% occupancy.

So props to this property and lets hear about all those Diamond Upgrades!

Quality Inn and Suite Val d'Or (Qc, CA) : upgraded once from a 2 queen beds room to a 2 queen beds mini-suite

Quality Inn Seattle : from Queen room to King (not very useful as I was alone)

Quality Hotel Vancouver : from 2 double beds to king (executive ?) room

Inn of Chicago, Ascend Collection Hotel. Upgraded to Corner Suite. ^

Hmm 216 views and three upgrades. Even assuming 50% of the views were just drive bys that's still a pretty poor showing. Of course lots of Choice properties really have no upgrades, but many Comfort Suites, Clarion and Cambrias do.

Choice the Freddies are on the line, no bribe too small....

Comfort Inn & Suites Downtown Chicago (Ohio at State).

Booked King room, got upgraded to Suite with 2 Double beds (aka "junior" suite.) Stay was booked on points (20k/night), for Fri & Sat night (in cases that makes a difference, note that this is a downtown business locaiton, but presumably fewer business travelers on weekend nights).

This suite has windows at both ends, with the "living" room (desk, sofabed, closet, and minikitchen of fridge/micro/coffee/sink) on the street side, then the entrance area and the bathroom, and finally the bedroom on the quite (ugly and dark, but who cares!) "courtyard" behind/between buildlings.

There is no door between these areas (just the bathroom door).

There's one heating/cooling unit for the living area (unit at window but controlled by thermostat away from window) and another one for the bedroom area (unit at window and controls within unit).

A separate (tube) TV (with real analog cable, inclujding fully localized TWC on channel 62) in each room (in the living room it's in a cabinet with doors, in the bedroom it's on top of a dresser).

I'm on wired internet access right now (wireless apparently does not reach up here to the 6th floor, though is available in the lobby/breakfast area on the first 2 floors). This wired intenet is only available at the desk in the living area.

That is a horribly inaccurate way of creating your % upgraded statistic, for several reasons:

1) The ratio of views to replies in this forum is generally between 50:1 and 100:1, not 2:1. 5 seconds of looking at the main page for Choice.

2) You assume that the 50% so-called non-"drive bys" are all Diamond, or even Elite members.

3) FT (and most forums) counts unique views - if you opened this thread after every reply, you would count several times over in that view count.

" That is a horribly inaccurate way of creating your % upgraded statistic, for several reasons..."


All technically quite correct I'm sure. But the spirit of the original post was really just to show that despite all reports to the contrary, SOME Choice properties really do honor the upgrade benefit, there just wasn't any factual data showing where and when. I'm not sure anyone at Choice beyond the Revenue Managers for the specific properties could really tell us how often the benefit is extended.

Cheers!

Just received an email form Choice indicating 53% of the respondents to their Elite survey group had received a room upgrade. Not to be confused with 53% of the STAYS having been upgraded however....

Anyone else with a Diamond Upgrade Success?

Funny this topic comes up when it's the lack of an upgrade that was the catalyst of me reducing my stays with Choice.

I consider an upgrade booking the cheapest room and getting a more expensive room at no additional cost, so I always play that game. Some hotels just don't really have anything to upgrade to, though. So, here are a list of places I've stayed that had upgrades available and gave them to me:

Comfort Suites - Haverhill, MA. (they upgraded me before I even walked in the door, one of the best properties out there for recognizing Elites)

Comfort Inn New Stanton, PA - occasionally.

Comfort Inn Greensburg, PA - always when available, but since their upgrades are to jacuzzi suites and I'm generally traveling solo, I pass.

Sleep Inn State College, PA - no real upgrades, but they'll give you a preferred room if you ask.

I would say that I get an upagrade at about 40% of the properties. Generally, though, no one even realizes that I'm diamond unless I ask for an upgrade. Choice is terrible at recognizing their elites, IMO.

And the one that really ticked me off and led to me use other chains?

Comfort Inn (PA400)
3191 Highfield Drive, Bethlehem, PA, US, 18020

As I've documented before, they had three opportunities, on three different occasions, to upgrade me from a two doubles to a queen room (a cost difference of $4 a night), and they refused (unless I wanted to pay the difference). That policy has cost that hotel over 40 nights in the last 3 years, and has cost choice at least a hundred over the same time frame. Now I only stay there during points promos, and even then I'll pass the points most of the time...

That is the crux of the situation - the only two real benefits to Elites are the extended booking window and point bonuses. The fine print of the upgrade benefit shows how worthless it is:

"Upgraded room types may include recently renovated rooms, rooms on a higher/lower floor, or rooms with favored views. Hotels are not required to upgrade members' rooms to specialty rooms or suites."

Not being near an elevator can be considered an "upgrade". Being on the second story of a 2 floor Comfort Inn can be considered an "upgrade".

It would not take much for Choice to have a more competitive elite program. Given the expansion of Cambria/Ascend plus repositioning Comfort Inn/Suites & Sleep Inn to a slightly higher end level as well, I'd think they would be adding benefits to better compete with IHG & Hilton.

And that is different than typical HHonors upgrade at a Hampton or HGI exactly how???

How are their benefits not already competitve with IHG?

IHG has no upgrade benefit at all! It's totally up to the hotel whether they give any benefits to elites (and only some fraction do, requiring much research to figure out if a hotel you're considering booking does).

IMHO IHG is not competitve with Hilton HHonors on benefits. Hilton HHonors gives free breakfast, free internet, and some sort of upgrade to Golds (mid tier), while IHG gives none of that (program-wdie) to Platinum (top tier).

When I was doing a lot of stays at Choice props, the last thing I expected was an upgrade. or indeed anything out of the ordinary. The only reason I was staying at Choice at all was to work the promos and get the points.

I then paylayed those points into some very nice stays in Europe for my whole family for free, and that made it all worthwhile.