J S

Yikes! I called Marriott to try to book a room with points. No availability after trying multiple dates and multiple hotels. The rep told me that they only release 10-15% of rooms for use with points. He also said it is hard to book luxury hotels (Ritz, JW, etc.) (This is just one phone rep, so he could be wrong.)

Does this jive with what other SPG members are seeing? I don't want to overreact based on one experience, but I also don't want to be the chump who stays loyal to Starwood, racking up points only to find them as hard to use as airline miles.

I guess I have been spoiled by SPG. I just put my SPG Amex card at the back of my wallet--no reason to add to my 450,000 points if it is going to be this hard to use them after the programs merge.

Please let me know if you see something different.

travelswithmyself

I've only booked twice with Marriott.

Once at a Courtyard in China. Once at JW in Singapore.

Both were with points. Both were wide open for booking with points, for my dates and around those dates. Easy peasy to book.

I think you shouldn't jump to conclusions just because the hotels you want aren't available for the dates you want. SPG hotels probably also release only a certain percentage of rooms for C&P.

To investigate this further, try searching up to a year out for one particular hotel, and then try again for another, if you haven't already done so. If you already have and can't find any, then it's probably hotel-specific.

Jebby_ca

Cash & Points - probably limited inventory.

SPG Free Nights? As long as there is a standard room available for sale, it is available using points.

travelswithmyself

Ooops. Yep. Amended.

CodeAdam10

This is a little strange. Marriott usually has pretty decent award availability. Which hotels were you looking to book?

margarita girl

Why are you calling instead of just booking yourself online? I've also never had problems getting availability with Marriott points.

CPRich

Discussions on Marriott Rewards available can be found ... wait for it ... in the Marriott Rewards forum..

Including this exact same discussion.

mahasamatman

This is the biggest downside to the Marriott program. Once the limited award rooms are gone, that's it. But I have found way more opportunities for BRG, so I haven't needed to actually use points yet.

Orange County Commuter

Of course what SPG does is make most rooms something besides Standard so they can't be booked.

Honestly I find booking rooms on SPG harder then on Marriott where I rarely have issues.

I just checked both chains for a weekend in London. SPG came back with one option. Marriott came back with about 10.

I also don't think the "once the limited rooms are gone, that's it" statement is 100% correct. I have been watching for what I wanted in Paris for while and "bingo" a few weeks ago the hotel opened up again after having been out of award rooms for a month or two.

J S

Thanks for the responses. I have found SPG availability to be excellent. I can think of only one time that a Starwood hotel had rooms for sale but no award availability (they had 1 higher level room available and no points rooms--I can't really complain in that case). It is sometimes frustrating when I wanted a nicer room or a suite and it wasn't available for points, but there was still the option of booking a basic room.

My Marriott experience, while a very small sample--hence my request to see what others were experiencing--has been very different.

Has anyone stopped using their Starwood Amex card and shifted to a different card?

KENNECTED

The programs remain separate. I will continue to use my SPG American Express product.