Originally Posted by boolean64

All along i think the focus in language on blackouts (even in this thread that i started and believe it got renamed by moderators to "no blackout") has really not done us any favors. Actual blackouts are much much lower impact than the allowance of capacity controls. The real loss of award inventory (for legacy SPG properties) is the hotels' ability to list just one room and be in compliance. having a true no blackout policy would not alleviate much of the frustration we experience. Only going back to "if a standard room is available for cash, then its available for points" would do that. And that's not going to happen. Marriott tried to make that stick when the merger happened, even using that specific language in FAQs and maybe even in T&Cs. But for whatever reason, either Marriott or the legacy Marriott hotel owners decided this position was untenable and it was dropped. I remember reading out loud from the website to the hotel at the very beginning of this thread and several Marriott folks and all of them were clear that this just couldn't be and the website must be wrong...and a few months later, the website was updated to what we have now.