I've been seeing some hotels offering upgraded rooms since the merger. I recently stayed at the JW Cancun in an upgraded room using points. I just checked both the JW and the regular Marriott next door both still have upgraded rooms with points (including some fairly nice suites). In the Maldives, the St. Regis seems to have a few upgraded rooms (including Overwater villas) with points. While I ended up in Cancun this past January, I almost went to Costa Rica instead. A couple of the resorts on the west side of country had various suite types available for points at that time. I usually go to Orlando a few times a year and while I don't usually book them, the JW Grande Lakes quite often has their Executive suites available for points. Even the RC next door to the JW Grande Lakes will offer suites on points. (I look as it is the same point cost as the JW.)

These are the places I've been looking at (since they are where I have been looking to travel.) One thing about the legacy SPG hotels though, and this is just a guess, how they "offered" upgraded rooms seemed to be different than the way Marriott hotels did. For example, with Marriott if the hotel wanted to offer suites and other upgraded rooms for award points, then you would see them with the online reservation tool. But with legacy SPG, I seem to remember never (or rarely) seeing them with the online reservation tool. I had to call in to see if they had suites available. I'm wondering if that is still the case where for Westins and Sheratons, and so on, maybe if you get the Plat/Titanium/Ambassador agent to call the hotel to see what, if any, suite inventory they have for awards, they might offer some. But I haven't tried that and others, may say they have tried and it didn't work.

But at the end of the day, there are and there have been hotels that have offered suites and other upgraded rooms for points. But those do tend to be the "resorts" or hotels that have a lot of them to offer, not the traditional city, "business" Marriott with only a couple of suites in the hotel.