How does this benefit work?

Ive never needed to use this before, but we are trying to book a room for next April (eclipse) and most hotels are sold out. The diamond elite line folks just tell me they will leave a message with the hotel manager? I waited all day yesterday for a call back from one manager and heard nothing.

For context, we originally booked a room at a holiday inn, as it’s the closest viewing spot to us. I booked the day the inventory opened a few months ago. I just noticed that our reservation was cancelled. We weren’t notified, but the folks at IHG told me the hotel cancelled our $110 room and we can rebook it (in theory, we need a call back from a manager which hasn’t happened for 48 hours) for about $2000.

Not only don’t I want to spend 3 days in a small
town when I have job (that’s the minimum stay at $600 per night), the fact they cancelled with no notification leaves a really bad impression. I would have likely noticed when the stay made it to the top of my list of stays on the app front page, but I travel a lot and that would be next year. It was pretty flukey I rechecked the reservation!

anyhow, I thought I’d change strategies and go for a nicer hotel in Cleveland. But they are all booked solid. Which gets back to my question. I know this is a crazy popular night, but what’s the use of this benefit if the hotel has easy availability. How do I actually utilize it?