Originally Posted by
lexdevil
The nights issue is sill not clear, though that is not my personal concern. I am more concerned about spend.
If we will not get spend credit for room blocks we book and pay for, I may stop booking group contracts and book only individual rooms. Of course I'll need to know how many rooms I'll be credited with (for spend). I'll also need to know if I will get credit for more rooms if I have all of the room charges routed to my room.
In January the Residence Inn Tempe (where I had no group contract) routed all room charges to my room (not at my request). The result was around $7K in charges on my room, but I received no MR points (because I could only be given points on three of the rooms). I had to call in to get the MR points added manually. If doing this will get me spend credit for all of my rooms, I'll opt for this strategy and have them add points manually.
I just need to know what the policy is. Until I know, I'm not signing any group contracts that I can't get out of. I'm just booking (lots of) individual cancelable rooms.
Yes, lots of details unknown right now and they do not seem to be rushed to get them out. I'm still trying to understand why they can't even name the program now (yes, very trivial item) but can see all the "fine points" needing washed through the conversion team. Just reading back through these threads of all the people that are going to bail because they don't have the details of the new program is frustrating. Having been involved in new product releases, this is exactly why we did not pre announce anything as it would just about kill current products with customers wanting to wait for the latest/greatest. There is only so much you can hide from customers and everyone wants to think they deserve knowing what's coming down the pipe. The total FT population is a very small percentage of the MR/SPG world, but we just might be among the loudest!
If I were in your position, I'd use what I know now and move forward. Keeping the plans flexible should allow you to adjust as more info is known. And you know there will be more business to leverage the program to your benefit. Given the size of your group (from what I've read) I would feel better knowing things are in place early.