Originally Posted by
CanadaDH
Yes, the system gives you fewer points when using a SNU than you would get had you only booked and stayed in the base room you upgraded from. It's mainly due to the way they seem to treat the taxes. Rather than just pricing the suite exactly like the room, they instead invoice it at the suite price, with suite price taxes, and then apply a credit to the room account so the final amount you pay is the same as the room price. So, it's treated more like a miscellaneous payment on the account rather than a discount in the suite rate. Below is an oversimplified example, assuming a VAT of 20%, and a room costing 1,000 and a suite costing 2,000.
That method might work out in your favour, if the taxes are recoverable, like for a business stay. But, I imagine nobody would actually use their SNUs on a work stay!
That's if the hotel doesn't screw it up further, and end up awarding a really messed up number of points where you don't know what the heck they did.
What makes it even more annoying is that the base rate when using a SNA is usually
more than the lowest base rate. So you pay more to use the SNA's than what you pay for a base room and yet you get
fewer points than a regular room.
I had this happen to me last year at the Pullman G in Bangkok over two weekends (two, two night stays). I complained to Accor Customer Service and they couldn't understand it even after 8-9 e-mails where I explained it many different ways (though I didn't use a chart like yours, mb I should have). They kept attributing it to a currency conversion problem.
Basically, the agent was looking for a way to say no, insisting that the hotel calculation was correct, even though I got fewer points than when I stayed the week prior (where I was upgraded to a suite without any SNA's). It was clearly a hotel mistake in calculating the base rate when I got fewer points when using the SNA's the 2nd weekend compared to the first weekend when I paid less, did not use SNA's, and got
more points.
I persisted and eventually the customer service agent handed it back to the hotel to respond to. The hotel finally figured it out and correctly re-calculated the points it awarded for my 2nd stay when I used two SNA's. They awarded the points based on the rate I paid for the base room.