Had my first experience trying to use these awards this weekend. It went well, I suppose, though it didn't necessarily go the way it was supposed to.
We had a reservation at the Equinox in Vermont and applied the suite nights. The request was denied, apparently because the property is completely sold out. That isn't a huge surprise -- autumn weekends in Vermont are popular. I do believe that at one point, every single room was booked.
Anyway, the three suite nights were returned to my account. Yet, when I checked in Friday night, we were upgraded to a lovely bi-level suite -- one of the options i had tried to apply the suite night awards to. I'm not sure if my Ambassador stepped in or we just got lucky, but we ended up in a suite without even having to use the awards. I still have five, and I suspect they will expire before I can use them. Oh well.