I have had mixed experience with SNA's:

1) First request was for 5 nights for upgrade to Oceanfront Suite at Residence Inn Bethany Beach over July 4th week. Declined at 5 day window and no upgrade when I checked in given the original City View Suite I booked. I wasn't terribly surprised when it didn't come through.

2) Second request was for 1 night for upgrade to a 2 Bedroom Suite at a Townplace Suites in Front Royal in The Fall. It was granted at 5 days out.

3) Third request was for 1 night for upgrade to Residential Suite at Denver Marriott Tech Center in the Fall. It was granted a few days in advance. Only used one here because I had extra SNA's to burn for the year and was curious about the room type.

4) Fourth request was for 1 night for upgrade to a Maiden View Suite at Residence Inn Manhattan Downtown/Financial Center the Sunday of Thanksgiving Weekend. It was granted at 5 days out.

So used 3 of 5 SNA's. 2 SNA's will go to waste this year.

My take, %100 success rate for non-peak times and/or non prime resort locations. While I only have one personal data point, I suspect SNA success rate will continue to be poor or near zero for resorts and/or major city locations during peak times. Many locations I stay at regularly when we're visiting family don't have anything to upgrade to for our room type (e.g. we need a two queen bed room when traveling as a family). There are many more properties with options for suites with a single King bed. So nothing to request a lot of the time.

Another observation, while some folks in the thread we're annoyed that their SNA was rejected but were ultimately granted an upgrade at check in, it may be in fact another subtle benefit of SNA's. I.e. The SNA's provide a mechanism to communicate when an upgrade is truly desired. So the property may use one of the upgrades from their limited pool to give you a complimentary upgrade as a result. The fact that they effectively return the SNA's to you to use again is a nice gesture.

Overall, as I have stated previously, I believe complimentary upgrades are cyclical at Marriott. Currently, I think we are in a down portion of the cycle where they are harder to come by. The SNA's while nice to have are not that compelling. To be truly compelling, the upgrade would need to be guaranteed at the time of booking as long as the property had the requested suite type available. I.e. a true guaranteed upgrade. Since the pool of SNA's is fairly small overall based on the criteria for giving them out, it shouldn't have that adverse an affect on the properties bottomline. Furthermore, similar rules for suites could be applied to how properties are reimbursed for regular rooms. E.g. if a certain percentage of the suites are already occupied, the reimbursement amount is near the full ADR for the suite type.

--Jon