Originally Posted by
RAPC
As William did, I was working on the Gold level as this was appropriate to status of the OP, so I'm not sure why you are splitting hairs at this reference as it is purely an example. However a Gold member should be more likely to get an upgrade for a room like this than a standard non-status member.
What I would expect to see now would be for less upgrades to be allocated and a stricter set of inventory management put in place at some properties. (i.e. they won't sell more standard rooms than they have, knowing they can upgrade) That in turn may then limit the number of standard rooms available in the pool, which has a knock-on effect to award nights.
The point was/is that at various times of the year we are talking about peak periods for Malta's higher end hotels and they will have to upgrade many guests since that is just how they manage to sell the property to its max. As long as the above-mentioned Starwood instruction to the hotel(s) isn't limited to just Golds/Platinums upgraded, the hotel won't be motivated to prioritize upgrades for some of those package tourists over SPG Golds/Platinums and will end up upgrading Golds/Platinums anyway. This has nothing to do with splitting hairs -- it has to do with wanting: a) hotels providing the normal amenities associated with the higher category room regardless of the status of guests placed in the higher category room; and b) Starwood instructions not further biasing the upgrade selection against Golds/Platinums.
Last edited by GUWonder; Sep 1, 2009 at 4:14 pm