Originally Posted by
Dr Jabadski
Welcome to the club, so are many of us.
Upper Stories (US) rooms (and hence lounge access) has UNTIL RECENTLY been like a "hotel within a hotel" and if one wanted US one had to pay for US, neither Glob status nor a SUA nor a CAA nor a GOH award worked. However, a few days ago the quote below was posted.
My personal experience at this hotel is 2 stays as Glob, May 2023 and May 2024, 2-3 nights each. I’m Navy retired, both stays were during Fleet Week NYC, I played those cards via phone calls and emails prior to each stay. Last year (post # 347 above) I did not use a SUA and during a phone call the morning of my afternoon check-in I was told that they had extended me a “Globalist as available” upgrade to a studio suite, not US. I asked about US Lounge access, was denied. I ended up having a very unpleasant experience (post # 349) with their contracted parking garage for which the hotel graciously “took ownership”.
This year (post # 502) I chose to apply a SUA and was upgraded to a US 1BR suite. I don’t know if my US suite upgrade was due to US suite now being standard for SUA awards OR further “customer service recovery” for my terrible experience last year OR in consideration of my Navy career and Fleet Week.
As I mentioned, I used my SUA via calling the Globalist line and they told me they had confirmed a 1BR Upper Stories suite (to my surprise), and I can see in my account that it is, in fact, a 1BR Upper Stories suite - plus the Globalist rep explicitly said it included access to the "Upper Stories" lounge. Now, who knows whether this is actually now the new policy or whether it was some sort of fluke. I didn't speak directly to the hotel so I'm not 100% sure everything will go as planned, but my understanding is that every room in the "Upper Stories" section of the hotel has "Upper Stories" lounge access. I suspect that if you are NOT upgraded to an "Upper Stories" room via SUA or otherwise you will NOT have access to the lounge up there, primarily because they aren't calling it a "Club Lounge" but still call it an "Upper Stories" lounge.
So there are a number of possibilities here:
1) At the very least, it seems they are now allowing SUAs to upgrade you to an Upper Stories suite instead of only the 'studio suites' on the lower floors. I suspect this is in fact the only real change
2) It is POSSIBLE they are now opening up "Upper Stories" rooms and suites to complimentary Globalist upgrades. I would not bet on this
3) It seems unlikely that they are opening up the Upper Stories lounge to Globalists and/or Club Access Awards even if you're not upgraded to an Upper Stories room or suite. But who knows