I'd tried to use a Suite Night Certificate, and I must say, Accor has made these so opaque that they are pretty much useless if the agent I got was correct.

I was looking to book at a Fairmont property that had a new year "relax and recharge" special for $299, which is publicly available special with a modest discount to the typical rate. FYI, a Junior Suite under the promo would be $499. This seems to just be a normal "promotional" rate, and not something that is covered by the exclusions.

I called in to book a stay, expecting that I'd pay the $299 for a room under the New Year special and apply a suite upgrade. I'm told that's not how it works, and the suite upgrade is based on a discount off the rack rate. So if I want to use my suite upgrade, they take the rack rate for the suite ($669), and then give me a discount of $120, so I'd only pay the low low price of $549, which is $250 more than what I was going to pay to book the room, and $50 more than what I can book a suite for under their current special. This agent told me that specials or promotional rates are not eligible, and it's based on a discount off the rack rate. If this is how the suite upgrades work, this is a complete pile of garbage, as I can book a suite outright for less than what they're offering when they tie the suite upgrades to the rack rate.

Just when I think Accor's done something good to restore a former Fairmont benefit, it turns out to be a complete pile of garbage.

My guess is that Accor was more worried about giving exceptional upgrades for a very low price and so we have the issue depending on promotions available it may just be cheaper booking the suite on the promotion. With these issues and complaints I will say Accor will need to add a Best Price discount on the suite upgrade. A certain percentage of maybe 20 to 30 percent depending on the type of special. I would assume and Hope it is mostly sorted out by the time they allow the upgrades to be used with an online booking. I sort of knew there would be issues at the begining so hoping it will be fine by December 2020 or maybe even June/July if it gets worked out within a couple of months.

Part of the reason for issues we have is that Accor is not as strong as we would like and some hotels try to resist being too generous.

You're excusing Accor's incompetence, and hoping they figure it out in another years' time? They've been planning this for a very long time. They should have it figured out already. Heck, they already had it working once before. Accor built a portal in their existing system to manage suite upgrade certificates akin to the former FPC. It worked just fine.

This entire ALL rollout and design has been an inexcusable and unmitigated disaster, and Accor is not deserving of any patience here.

It's bad enough they released Suite Upgrade awards and limited them to a single night. That's a big cost control right there. But to limit them in such a way that you can just book a suite outright cheaper, makes them useless. It should be a straight up upgrade, room category to designated suite category, applicable to whatever other rate the hotel makes available to book. To do anything else, like making it only applicable on full rack rates, means you're not really providing an upgrade.

Just to add a few more details, the price I was quoted for a suite using a Suite Upgrade Award was also far higher than the Best Available standard rate, as the rack rate on a Fairmont room for that day is $419, but I'm getting quoted over $500 for a Junior Suite to use a Suite Night Certificate, so I did a bit more digging to try to understand what the basis is for the Suite Upgrade pricing, as it's higher than even the rack rate for a Fairmont room.

Available rates for the day I was looking at booking:
New Year promo Fairmont Room $299
New Year promo Junior Suite $499
Best Available Rate Fairmont Room $419
Junior Suite using Suite Award quoted at $512 or $549 by 2 different agents

Apparently the base rate used for the Suite Night Award is the rack rate for a standard Junior Suite, and the Suite Night Award moves you up to Junior Suite Lake View, so to use the hard-earned certificates, you get a one category upgrade when you pay rack rate on a Junior Suite. Except that I could book a suite for cheaper in the first place using one of several promotions that are available. What a complete dumpster fire.

It's looking like this Suite Night Upgrades might be worthless for most us. I was assuming they worked like they do for Hyatt and Marriott, where you book a regular room and then apply the upgrade, if available. But as Gcashin said, it's really just a small discount on the price of a suite. Actually, it wasn't even a real discount because the price of the suite after using the upgrade was not only way above the price of the regular room, but above the online price of the suite!

It's possible that I was just unlucky. But I don't think so. The agent told me that of the 20 people she has tried to help, not one of them actually went through with a booking.

Has anyone here been able to use one? I quickly scanned the posts above and didn't see any positive reports but I might have missed some.

That's seems to how any logical suite upgrade program works. And also how Fairmont suite upgrades used to work. Book a room, and then use a certificate to get upgraded to a Suite. Except with Accor. :-(

gcashin and BigE , that sounds just terrible!

I have managed to use two of my SNAs so that I was satisfied with the outcome. I contacted hotel management directly and they booked me a deluxe room, used my SNAs to upgrade me to a junior suite and on top that they gave me another, platinum/diamond upgrade to a grand suite. I would suggest to contact hotel instead of customer service center.

What brand of property did you manage to apply the upgrade directly? Sounds like some brands can do it via the hotel, but Fairmont, Raffles, and Swissotel can only be done via Accor CS based on the terms. I was trying to book one for a Fairmont property. So perhaps it may be easier for some brands, but it seems like they've effectively killed Suite upgrades at Fairmonts.

It's Raffles actually.

The current system is a big mess. I hope Accor makes it easier soon.

I was trying Fairmont also.

i made a reservation at movenpick marrakech
my first email asking for a SNU was answered ,,we take good notice off your reguest ,,
i respond with thank you and asked to be more precise about my reguest
i wait .
greetings cornelis

and YES
got the confirmation direct about the upgrade using the SNU
greetings cornelis

A request to Accor's damage limitation department:

Please arrange for the validity of SNUs to be extended to a date 12 months after it becomes straightforward to use them.

Terrible experience so far with SNU. Platinum Accor, nearing Diamond.

Booked two nights on sale (prepaid) at Sofitel Singapore City Centre back in Nov 2019 for later this year for a leisure trip.

Received notice of the SNU to the profile and contacted the hotel to apply both nights SNU in Dec assuming they would work as other loyalty programs (ie. Upgrade applied to paid room if suite room available)

Finally received confirmation this week on how they would apply it.

The difference for balance payable? $600SGD for the stay! After an incredulous Vreply back to them (before reading this thread), received this clarification on how SNU work:

Terrible implementation of suite upgrades, they might as well rename if "room discount" benefit. 👎👎👎

It is like they implemented the exact opposite of the FPC cert.