Originally Posted by
ElmhurstNick
A few months ago when the Kimpton conversion was completed, I booked an award stay at the CP City for later in April using one of my free Kimpton nights. I was given a choice of accommodations including a "one bed suite." I went to check something on the reservation today, and it's showing that the hotel has changed my stay to a revenue stay at 364 GBP, and that the hotel no longer has any award rooms for the night in question.
I'm going to wait until Monday to get somebody at some sort of supervisory level at IHG to look into this. I have an email confirmation showing "FREE" so i'm going to be quite cross if they try to tell me I have to find a different property to use my certificate. There is nothing comparable on points on short notice, I don't consider an 18 sqm room at the IC Park Lane with no Spire benefits to be similar even though it's at a higher redemption rate, and the location is lousy for what I need on this trip (into LGW, out of LCY).
The fact that multiple room types were available when I made my selection isn't unusual, the Indigo Paddington has 4 different room types available on award for that night. If the suite wasn't supposed to be available, downgrade me to a club room, send me an email, and stick a reasonable amount of points in my account as an apology.
But.. I suspect that the property manager simply did not want to honor the award stay and thought that he/she could get away with changing it and hoping that I didn't notice until I arrived at the property and had no choice. Nobody made any attempt to call my cell phone or send me an email message. The Kimpton award expires on April 30.
If IHG just throws up their hands and says that they can't overrule the property, I have made a backup at a Marriott property that's not ideal but would have been my choice if the CP hadn't been available in the first place. But then I'm going to want 50,000 points back in my account to make up for the certificate (which I could have used at the Epic last weekend instead of points), plus more for the inconvenience.
I think you are unrealistic and you punted a chance on the mistake with Kimpton implementation, CP City historically is though very good at upgrading Ambassadors/RA's and Spires on checkin day to club, even on award nights. No one expects the free night to book into a suite.
It was reported at the time during Kimpton free nights first week of being bookable that at many hotels all room types were incorrectly bookable and that most 'chancers' who booked the costlier top cat rooms/suites were downgraded within the following week to the correct standard (entry level) room that free night should book too.
fyi, Indigo Paddington is actually an exception, it is a really small hotel, and popular too as convenient to Paddington Station. When occupancy is high this hotel has often released all rooms to ensure/get >95% occupancy to trigger IHG Corp paying average daily rate for award rooms versus the usual pittance.