Erasmus

Does anyone know whether I can use one of my remaining Suite upgrade certs for a stay for my spouse? Used to be as a Platinum they were transferrable, but obviously that's irrelevant now. I am currently an Accor Silver, spouse has no status. One route is to simply book the room in my name, apply cert, add spouse's name to room, and hope for the best at the hotel, but it would be nice to know if there is an "official" way to do it these days.

CanadaDH

Officially, the reservation can be in her name and take certificates from your account, provided you are staying there. Unfortunately, if you're not also travelling, the Accor systems don't have a function for transferring certs. I would try calling the hotel directly, as they probably have more flexibility than central reservations.

Erasmus

Yeah, hotel said no go. *Very* foolish business decision for them, as my wife and her friends would spend way more in a weekend at the spa then I would in a week-long stay, but so it goes...

CanadaDH

I suspect it wasn't done intentionally. The original communication was that certs would be used until Feb 2019 under the same rules as before. My suspicion is that it was a complete IT oversight, where they simply didn't bother to build a certificate transfer mechanism, not that they specifically wanted to disallow it. When I spoke to various people about transferring certs shortly after the conversion, most of the staff were confused over their inability to transfer them, and went away to research how to do it. They didn't immediately come back and say 'Accor decided not to allow it', as if it was planned and communicated to be that way. Yes, foolish decision, but I tend to think it was a foolish IT decision than a foolish business decision, not that it matters to the customers, who will be shifting their business regardless of the reason.