My husband and I are SPG gold members and booked a trip using points to the Westin Los Cabos (we booked about 3 months ago).
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Lots of moving parts here. At the time OP made reservations the property was not open. It did not re-open until April 1, 2017. Prior to the time OP made a reservation, as part of the Starwood spinoff of Starwood Vacation Ownership, to sweeten the pot Starwood packaged several hotel properties and transferred them to Starwood Vacation Ownership which was purchased by Interval Leisure Group (ILG) now operating the properties as Vistana Signature Experience. This property was one of those in that transfer.
ILG, through renovations, transformed the previous hotel rooms to timeshare villas. So this property is no longer your traditional hotel, in either offerings or SPG benefits, as it was in its prior life.
Not sure this history exonerates Starwood from OP's claims but it does show that the many moving parts added additional risk that changes would/could be forthcoming. That risk was compounded by OP's delay in firmly securing exactly the type of reservation he was desiring.
Originally Posted by
LondonElite
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On your first point, Starwood has management contracts with the hotel operator. These contracts are extremely detailed and require the operator and the employees at the hotel to follow defined brand standards. Some of these employees will indeed be on Starwood's payroll,
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Starwood does not have management contracts with each hotel operator flagged with a Starwood brand. IME, Starwood employees would only be at hotel properties where Starwood is managing the property on behalf of the ownership group.