having an award cert on the side will be of little value Unless its assigned to a res. Otherwise what you will have is say a cert for a week at a Cat 6 Hotel. But if the Hotel you wanted to stay at is now a Cat7 then you wont beable to use the cert as its for a Cat6 and the Hotel is now a Cat7.

If on the otherhand You cashed out and had an award issued for a week at a Hotel that was a Cat6 and it now is a Cat7, no problems they will honor it. Worse comes to worse if You dont use it they will return the the same amount of pts back into your acct as they took out or maybe You can simply use it at a different Cat6, but I doubt they will allow you to use it at what was also a Cat6 when you cashed in for what is now a Cat7.

AT SPG I know a few people who were able to move their stay by a full yr so they cashed in at a Cat2 level for a Cat3 before the '06 Cat increase and were able to still use it for this coming Fall. 1 simply put the pts back into their acct and got the amount of pts that it would take today at a Cat3 even though they cashed out for a Cat2, as the res reflected not was what taken out but the level that SPG had to pay for it, or a net gain of 23,000 pts for this person.