I’ve just encountered a situation at a hotel where at least 2 suites were available at check in but I was only given the same room category with a "city view". I spoke to the duty manager and he tried to explain that there were x number of ambassadors, titaniums and plats that night. When I asked why he didn’t upgrade ambassadors to suites then lowly plats like myself to a higher category he said that the suites had been assigned for up sell and were taken out of the upgrade pool.
It seems that the upgrade rules really have been watered down with reference to a hotel’s discretion as they can decide to allocate many of the rooms for up selling and not allocate them to elite members.
I contacted the Marriott Bonvoy Champion email address and got the most unhelpful reply I’ve ever had (in the past they had always been helpful but they used the Marriott terms to defend the hotel... and the reply wasn’t from the highly reputable William I might add). The email reply:
Thank you for your message regarding the X hotel. Your message is very important to us, as fulfilling the wishes and needs of our guests is the tradition of service upon which we are founded.
Complimentary room upgrades are a benefit we are happy to offer our Platinum Elite Members whenever possible. Room upgrades are based entirely on the hotel's discretion. Our hotels do their best to honor such requests, but special accommodations are based on availability and are not guaranteed.
As outlined in section 1.7.e. of our Loyalty Program Terms & Conditions, "All Loyalty Program benefits, amenities, offers, awards and services are subject to availability and may be changed at any time without notice." You can view these terms here:
https://www.marriott.com/loyalty/terms/default.mi.
Please accept our apology for any inconvenience you experienced. Your observations are most useful in our pursuit of total guest satisfaction and comments from customers such as yourself allow us to make improvements.
Thank you for choosing Marriott Hotels and we look forward to meeting your future lodging needs.
Safe Travels,
The above (1.7e) I thought, was meant to protect Marriott and not the hotels! So if this is true, we can be denied every single benefit in the programme. I would have been happy if they looked into the situation and contacted the hotel for an explanation just to keep the hotel on their toes with a polite reminder to upgrade guests when rooms are available but the reply above really makes me feel like I was being fobbed off. Again, it’s the worst ever reply I’ve had from Marriott.