Originally Posted by
hhoope01
I doubt that Marriott forgot about GH. I suspect that since the hotel has recently been going through some major renovations it has had fewer award reservations there. Given that Marriott uses past award volumes as part of their category estimations, that probably means this is where they wanted to leave it. But I do agree that it probably won't stay there for very long as it will get a lot more award reservations now.
My sentiments exactly. Marriott is much too a sophisticated operation to have overlooked this. The more rational argument as you have proferred above is that since this property is still a work in progress that they decided to keep it a Category 7. Support for this proposition is based upon the fact that this hotel was and perhaps still is on P/S during the past Christmas holiday whereas all the other Category 7 properties in London were not.
That said, all bet are off for this hotel in 2010 when all rennovations will likely be complete and a critical mass of travelers will have frequented this property when complete -- likely resulting in uniformly good reviews, something lacking right now, at least on Tripadvisor.com.