Regardless of local laws, Starwood should enforce the agreement. By not doing so, Starwood is supporting poor strategy and planning by their member hotels. One time when I told my former manager that I needed to perform some maintenance on some servers that night when I had already notified people of the change, she asked why I didn't submit the change request earlier. I told her I forgot. She told me that my poor planning was not really her problem and that I would need to reschedule. Simply put, their inability to block rooms for special events in a timely manner should not be a penalty extended to their customers with existing reservations. Corporate should take a strong, pro-customer position on this issue rather than having another Pasadena or New Orleans incident.