Originally Posted by
margarita girl
I've actually used a points reservation combined with a cash reservation to my advantage. I pointed out in the BRG notes that I understand they would have to take my points reservation into account when approving the BRG. In my case, the reward nights drove up the price of the overall reservation. LOL. Gotcha Marriott!
Ugh, not sure if it's something that's changed with the BRG process or I've just got bad agents... I couldn't get through to the agents that my "claim" was for the entire stay, including the points booking. They keep just insisting that my "claim" is for the cash reservation dates only, and therefore not valid as it doesn't cover the entire stay.
Related... do you recall how exactly this type of claim was processed?
Say example you had 5 nights, with 3 on points and 2 on cash.
The BRG would have to compare cash (Marriott channel) for all 5 nights, and cash (OTA channel) for all 5 nights? I assume there's no way for the BRG team to assign a cash value to the award nights otherwise.
How would driving up overall price of the reservation be an advantage? My understanding is that BRG take the average OTA cost per night and checks it against individual nightly prices on Marriott. So if the award nights are more expensive, and the overall 5 night stay is more expensive, that would mean OTA nightly average is also more expensive. This could end up resulting in some Marriott individual nights being cheaper than the OTA average.
Originally Posted by
yorkboy24
You have to cancel the award, (re)book the cash stay, put in the BRG claim, get approved, then add the award / cash + points part after it’s approved. I can’t see any other way of doing it.
That does seem to be the most straight forward way.... but also seems a bit ridiculous to have to jump through this kind of hoops.