Thank you socrates!! These folks at HQ are very responsive and professional (though had to get forwarded to another department for assistance with Fairfield inns) and the gentlemen will follow-up and see what can be worked out with the local hotel. Will post back on the result Monday or Tuesday. The Fairfield property manager has been unavailable to speak to me for the last 3 days, and I still don't have any word on what is going on there.

The more I think about it, the more I think it is unfair for them to not call back way earlier if they felt they may not be able to honor the reservation; or to let others without prior reservations move to the Marriott property elsewhere in the city. Now if they had called me ahead of time and said we got a bunch of folks that have come in to do volunteer work to help out (a possible scenario) with the homeless, it would have been hard to say no to a request for us to be more flexible in our hotel accomodations.