Originally Posted by
calculus1918
What is going on with this Marriott Reservation System???
We have stays coming up in NYC, Washington DC, Guangzhou and Chengdu this year. We have already emailed each property and requested a complimentary upgrade with our titanium status. Many of the properties mentioned above were kind and upgraded us to a suite and we were ecstatic. For example, our next stay at the Aloft Long Island City Manhattan View, the generous staff had already upgraded our points reservation to the Breezy Penthouse suite last November (Confirmation Number 74638203). However, when I logged into my account this morning, everything had changed back to the basic double room. We had already spent time emailing each property writing numerous reviews based on our valuable experiences on TripAdvisor. Now with this glitch, we are starting from scratch.
We have been loyal members for years, but the merge is making things harder and harder which should not be the case. We are also diamond members with the Hilton chain and the glitches seems to happen more often on the Bonvoy side post merger. By the way, all of our reservations made with cash stayed the same, this strictly applies to point or annual award reservation.
That has nothing to do with IT glitches, especially the automatically award repricing glitch that has been widely reported recently.
The Titanium upgrade benefit is valid only at check-in and only if there is availability for the entire duration of the stay.
Pre-upgrades are just tentative and may change or revert at any time due to a variation in projected occupancy or a higher demand for (paid) suites than originally anticipated. Unless one has a property giving a firm confirmation in writing for a courtesy upgrade (which I seriously doubt any property would do, save for very exceptional reasons) one should not count or rely on any pre-upgrade showing up on the booking details.
Upgrades may happen for a variety of reasons other than loyalty benefits (oversold room category, marketing, commercial arrangements, etc). Rooms and room categories get assigned and reassigned several times as need may be. A plat upgrade is only confirmed at check in and up to that moment anything can happen, including having a pre-upgraded reservation reassigned to the room category originally booked.
As we’re often told on this forum: if one needs or requires a suite for one’s stay, one should book and pay for a suite.