For what it's worth, I am at 100% upgrades in the last 2 months. Before that, I was at about 25% (and I'm probably being generous).

What has been working very well is to call the Platinum number when I'm about 15 minutes away from checking into the hotel, asking the phone rep to check the hotel's room availability, and tell me if any suites are available. When they offer to reserve the room for me, I tell them that I already have a reservation for those dates at that hotel, and ask them to contact the hotel front desk to ensure that I get the suite. All of the phone reps have been very happy to do this, and many are even apologetic when I explain to them the reason I had to call them and ask for their help.

Admittedly we should not have to do this and waste our time, but this may be the only way to get Marriott to "energize" their hotels. If their phone reps are having their time taken up by guests who need them to intervene to teach their own hotels the rules, perhaps corporate will be more concerned about this issue.

Just my $0.02.