Originally Posted by
mister__big
Unfortunately, your experience is certainly not out of the ordinary. There've been quite a number of reports in this forum of "phantom upgrades" for Ambassadors, and even sometimes for Royal Ambassadors as well. I believe hotel owners do not like the Ambassador program since it brings no revenue for them while costing them money to provide the benefits. Therefore they resort to tactics such as phantom upgrades, which is something IHG really needs to clamp down on if they expect people to pay for the program.
An upgrade doesn't cost money unless the hotel is fully booked and the upgraded room could have been sold otherwise. But that's not the case at the vast majority of stays.
What concerns 'mystery' room categories, they've popped up here and there (Malta, Hamburg), but in the OPs case they seem to resemble a real upgrade (renovated room). There are plenty of hotels where a one level upgrade just means a higher floor room (IC Vienna) or a better view (IC Nanjing and Foshan).
There is no easy answer to the OP's issue and I'm inclined to suggest that the hotel has a good point for
paid AMB status. Nonetheless, the hotels with 'mystery' categories are just a few.