Originally Posted by amymeibt
Starwood does have restrictions, as the ritz-certificate: standard room only. Last Oct. I tried to redeem rooms at both ritz and spg maui, ritz have availability till Dec23, spg is a little better, gave me avaiability till Dec24, both are not avaiable after Dec24. SPG is more flexible than ritz because it has more hotels and points can be transfered to airlines. No doubt SPG has the best affinity card program of all hotel chains except the dread Amex financial review, I got hit last year and I decided to close all my amex cards and never use them again.
I made 3 reservations at ritz, that's what I got based on my experience and chat with ritz-reservation: before you make reservation, check rate at ritz website, for the ritz-maui, , if it's $25X/night, then u can use your merrill+ certificate; for the ritz-VI, if rate is $35X, u r fine too.
Starwood has *some* upgrade awards available through SPG. I understand that these are harder to get and can't always be gotten online. One of the complaints about the Starwood program is that some hotels will cheat the system by classifying a lot of their rooms as something other than standard (even when they truly are normal hotel rooms) to get around the No Capacity Controls rules. I know the Four Points in Cincinnati does this, but I've never been bitten by it anywhere else. (Thankfully.)
What is the Amex financial review?