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2010 Award Redemption Categories
Each year about this time, Starwood Preferred Guest has made adjustments to award categories for individual hotels.
Categories are determined on a forward looking basis, which led to last year's adjustment that moved 160 hotels to a lower category. Though rates are expected to generally rise in 2010, we wanted to make sure all of our members are able to continue to take advantage of our 2009 award levels. As a result, categories will not be changing for any of our branded hotels in 2010.
As a reminder, we also announced at the end of last year that peak season awards would continue to be suspended throughout 2010 at all of our hotels. This change provides you with 20 to 25 percent more value for your points during the peak times at our higher category hotels.
Thank you for sharing your travels with us at our hotels and resorts around the world…we greatly value your loyalty and look forward to welcoming you on your next stay with us.
Best regards,
William R. Sanders
Online Guest Feedback Coordinator
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide
I agree with the hidden devaluation. if we didn't have any hotels go down this past year we never will. I'm glad points for redemptions didn't move but come on SPG, be consistent with applying this yearly. Many hotels should have been adjusted downward.
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Categories are determined on a forward looking basis, which led to last year's adjustment that moved 160 hotels to a lower category.
I know this is just basically a press release from the higher-ups through you, so this is not directly at you.
But SPG's "forward looking" wasn't very correct 2 and 3 years ago when you all had no problem jacking up Hotel Categories for hotels that now have lower rates than back then. Seems to me the hotel categories were determined more on a "backward looking" basis in the past, and now that ADR is way down (~15% Year over Year), you have decided to ignore that and change your method to "forward looking/hoping" when determining hotel categories this year. Again, a big to SPG for this tricky devaluation this year. No wonder everybody and their mother seems to be flocking to Hyatt this year.
one thing good out of this.... a property i frequent on points/C+P is the same when I was sure it would go up a category with the increased rates last year.
can't please everyone... (how many more "i'm switching to another chain" posts will there be by day's end?)
Continued suspension of peak season awards is exceedingly positive. Already used a couple of Cat. 5 award nights in peak season in Grand Cayman for non-peak rates.
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Continued suspension of peak season awards is exceedingly positive. Already used a couple of Cat. 5 award nights in peak season in Grand Cayman for non-peak rates.
Very true, however Im speechless that Hotels werent being lowered in Cat levels as most Hotels have dropped their Rates, and in a few cases gone up if their Rates went up
Programs: UA PremEx, Hyatt Diamond, Marriott, IHG, Kimpton Inner Circle
Posts: 7,824
Guess I'm being ditzy here but I don't see how anybody is unhappy with this? Isn't it status quo and you don't have to pay MORE? What am I missing? I thought this sounded like a "good" thing???
While I am not going to give SPG a thumbs up for this, and I do believe that this is a decision that was made to avoid a large number of category drops, it could have been worse. The no peak dates for 2010 is a good thing, especially for Category 5 properties (I don't book above 12K points).
However, if SPG sneaks in category increases at some properties over the course of the year (changes can and do happen at any time for individual properties), and if next year SPG makes huge numbers of category increase decisions, then that will be very frustrating (if not necessarily surprising).
Guess I'm being ditzy here but I don't see how anybody is unhappy with this? Isn't it status quo and you don't have to pay MORE? What am I missing? I thought this sounded like a "good" thing???
Last year more properties dropped categories than increased categories. This year, if things had been done the way they had been done in the past, that was likely to be the case again.
I'm concerned about this. Some properties did indeed see increased rates. In these cases, I am afraid they will appeal to SPG to have their category increased, in which case we may well see some category increases with no decreases. While most of the changes happen in the annual readjustment, some changes (almost always upward) happen on an individual basis throughout the year.
Seems to me the hotel categories were determined more on a "backward looking" basis in the past, and now that ADR is way down (~15% Year over Year), you have decided to ignore that and change your method to "forward looking/hoping" when determining hotel categories this year. Again, a big 
