Originally Posted by smilee
So what is this high level of benefits at the gold and platinum level. For staying 50+ nights you get gold and get lounge access on Monday-Friday stays or a free breakfast and you get a guaranteed room type. And a few extra bonus points.
I can not understand what is the big deal there. I would think they should jump at the opportunity to lure someone from staying at Hilton and switching their stays to Marriot. No?
What the guy from Marriott meant to say was that the demand for GE and PE benefits are very high that they don't want to give them away. I concur this based on my own experience, I stayed at Marriott Oakbrook, IL for 3 months, continuously getting access to the top floor rooms with fridge etc (due to fewer competing PE members) despite paying ridiculously low rate. At Marriott East Hanover, NJ, for 3 months now, only sometimes that I get access to the top floor rooms due to big numbers of PE staying over there and in that case they compared the rates I'm paying vs the others, and because of my lower rate, I usually 'lose out', though not all the time.
How do I know I wasn't being fooled? I could get in the lounge at Oakbrook anytime and not seeing a soul, in fact that was confirmed when talking to the nice lady attendant over there. At East Hanover, it's difficult to get breakfast without brushing shoulder with another lounge member, and they have at least two sometimes three attendants. True, another reason could be due the fact they are serving full breakfast at the lounge, I guess not all lounge visitors are GE or PE. But still the above observation still holds. I'm sure I'm not alone in this observation about Marriott Elite members/benefits.