Originally Posted by badjuju
My solution will not work in your case, but what I've done is called the individual hotel to arrange a negotiated rate for myself. Rate was lowered from $159/night to $95. ^ Thanks, Starwood.
Now I just have to dump 380,000 points I have in Marriott due to smoking policy.
One of the managers at my company did this with a Full-Serve Sheraton a couple of blocks from our office. Our guy just walked over and negotiated a $99 rate, to be exact. This was almost 50% off rack rate, and he felt like a real stud. That is, of course, until the first time he tried to use it. Bigwigs from NY office came in. The guy with whom our manager negotiated refused to honor the rate! No special event, etc. But hotel nearly sold out, and the GM just figured he could fetch a higher rate either from us or someone else.
I sat there thinking how I've never encountered that sort of junk from Marriott!