Originally Posted by
margarita girl
OP may want to change his thread title.
Fair enough, although I'm sure you got his point in using it. Too bad it has a negative connotation for some people...for most of us it's just a dumb name.
Originally Posted by
kaizen7
The main difference is ... airline frequent flyer programmes usually never list free upgrades as their benefit. I join Virgin Australia Velocity, Singapore Air Krisflyer and Emirates Skywards, and all of them never listed free upgrades as benefit. (and pretty much most of their tier benefits are guaranteed eg extra baggage allowance, free seat selection fee etc)
However, Bonvoy (and other hotel loyalty program) did list them as benefit even if it comes with disclaimed "when available".
Like I mentioned before, the problem arise when hotel didnt upgrade members and yet still listed the higher category rooms as available. And it become even worse when hotel acquiesce to the said elites demand by upgrading the complained members to the available suite.
Since there are many cases like this, then it will be easy to accuse the hotel being stingy.
Your first point doesn't match the scenario we're discussing. Some airlines DO post upgrades as an elite benefit (UA is one I'm very familiar with). So do some hotels. That's what we should compare, apples to apples not to oranges. It would be a totally different discussion if Marriott didn't list upgrades as a benefit. Likely everyone here would be delighted whenever they got one rather than upset they don't. So my prior point is (most) people don't go ballistic if they get a free F upgrade 50% of the time, but some here seem to think they should get it 100% of the time, regardless of what the other circumstances are or who else is already booked at the hotel.
But your point about hotels not upgrading when they should is fair. I had one instance at a legacy Marriott property (which I posted about in that hotel's thread, where I was given a lesser room than I booked. The hotel insisted there were no other rooms available. So I calmly brought up the room/bed guarantee and the compensation...and magically a room became available a little later.
These are problems with individual properties, not some overall conspiracy on Marriott's part to screw elites. So if it's the former, people should post their experience and specifically name the property, and present their proof that the hotel isn't following the rules. But people here seem to be blaming their experiences on the latter...and there are enough of us that get some upgrades sometimes that there's no logic to the conspiracy theory.