Just hit this verbiage attempting to book at the Embassy Suites at SFO for a random Thursday in January. My company's travel department does not allow bookings with cancellation penalties and they had never seen this language before (nor had I until I saw it and then found this thread). Even though I'm an HHonors member, they didn't want to risk time and effort of potentially dealing with this if things went wrong. Corporate travel departments like straightforwardness and simplicity. I'm now booked elsewhere.

A change fee for this particular night is a real head-scratcher -- all the reputable SFO airport hotels are running $150 or less for the night in question, which from my experience indicates very soft demand.

(Edit: typos)