Hotels manipulate definition of "standard room"
Originally Posted by
Marriott Concierge
These nights will all have to be pre-approved by Marriott Corporate. The exact number will vary slightly from one hotel to another, but a rough estimate is about 11 nights a year. On these nights hotels will be required to release as many standard rooms for point redemption as they currently do for non-blackout dates.
The positive aspect to this change is that more standard rooms will be available on more nights. Other than the nights just discussed above standard rewards will be available until the last standard room is booked.
Thanks
Marriott Concierge - can you address what will be done to protect against hotels manipulating their inventory to reduce the number of standard rooms. This is the same exact problem that existed with the Stay Anytime awards. All a property had to do was change the room type to "Deluxe" or some other room that is almost identical to the "Standard Room" to get around the requirement to offer the room as Stay Anytime. I don't see how this will change with the current program. In fact, now a hotel has even more incentive to re-classify it's rooms and reduce the number of standard rooms available.
Last edited by sziv50; Oct 22, 2008 at 5:58 am