FlyerTalker688786

That is true. But that is not to say hotel has no authority over this. The said hotel can close off availability of standard room (or lowest category of rooms) by either showing fully booked, or out of order, to deter the requirement of award inventory. IHG only require the award availability when the standard rooms are still available.

The_Bouncer

So basically, all a property has to do to completely block award availability is to categorise only a few of their rooms as standard, then designate the vast majority of their rooms in a very slightly higher category for an extra $2, then mark the "standard" ones as "out of order" until they hit, say, 90% occupancy and need to sell them?

FlyerTalker688786

That is basically correct. For example, one HIX has King bed and 2 Double Bed. Both in fact are standard room. But the hotel charge $1 more in 2 double beds, then only the King is considered standard or lowest priced rooms. So you see award availability in King but not 2 double beds. Then one HI in Asia could classify 2 floors of twin rooms as standard and the rest of 20 floors as Deluxe, Special View, Superior, High Floor, Business and Executive, although they charge the same room rate between Twin and Deluxe, only the twin rooms show availability in award as Standard.

Whether they put OOO in the room status to wait for 95% magic number or not, that is another story. And no one can prove that. It is only in theory, hotels can get away with that, especially if the hotel only has 75 rooms and only a handful among them are lowest category rooms.

Of course only very very extraordinary cases a rouge hotel would do that, very cowardly. But you occasionally come across a hotel either under Hilton or IHG choose the path for whatever reason on selected occasions (in re-classify the room category, not Out of Order trick, the latter can not be proved unless you can access on property management system).

Nevertheless, another trick hotel can take is to create a potential tour group blocks or a potential meeting delegation blocks or local travel agent blocks so that all standard rooms get blocked until near the time to be released (normally 30days, 21 days of 14 days group block release, take your pick.). But I doubt hotel would intentionally do that, or try this trick more than once per year. Otherwise the sale manager would have a lot to answer for.

To summarise, there are many tricks for hotel to block the standard or lowest priced rooms in order to block award availability. I am not suggesting any hotel is doing all the tricks I mentioned. I am just trying to say that there is always some ways for hotel to manoeuvre the contractual requirement.

markis10

You are clearly not across how IHG manage rewards and how much flexibility hotels have. Essentially hotels are set a minimum, not a maximum number of nights they can offer, and its well known that the smarter REVPAR managers open up rewards nights when their occupancy approaches 100%, as exampled by many of the Sydney hotels at New Years Eve and on a regular basis by HI Singapore who offer Suites at normal room rates when they are close to full. The compensation for rewards nights is based on two things - rack rate and occupancy.

Pointsbreaks are available if reward nights are available.
Hotel has no control over the number of points breaks that are allocated to the property, but do have control over reward nights they can offer, from memory the Silom property quickly reduced availability when they were put on pointsbreaks IIRC

REVPAR managers are their to maximise the rent, its their job! Let me give you an example:

Intercontinental Sydney have award nights for a stay Dec 30 2019 until Jan 2, cost is 195000 points or AUD $1127 per night, and note using points they are non refundable, just as best flex is not refundable. If they were put on the end of year points breaks list, those points breaks would also be non refundable.

Sisyphus1carus

Do they go live at 5pm today in the UK ?

12:00 Monday, Eastern Time (ET) is 17:00 Monday, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

miadukes

Until when is this list good?? Is it 2 months again or 3?

The_Bouncer

That is generally their MO.
12:00 Eastern, 17:00 UK, 18:00 in most of Europe.

travelbarefeet

zpoppy

The_Bouncer

I hope for this too. At a bit of a loose end for a couple of weeks in late March and early April and looking for something within a day's drive of Bregenz, Austria (which covers a good chunk of Europe).

mster

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lebowski2222

The Holiday Inn in Villach Austria (5 Hour Drive) is a great property and its only 15k a night normally, right in the city center. We went this past year and they had some kind of symphony playing on the river and we could see it from our room

Concerto

You could even get a train Super Sparpreis like I did last week from Switzerland to Duisburg - only cost 14 Euros!

I must be the only person winding over the Alps right now in a yellow Swiss postbus eagerly looking at Pointbreaks! Nobody else would understand the nuttiness of it! List will probably go live while I'm in the train later.

The_Bouncer

Of course! I had forgotten about Villach. I stayed there a few years back on a drive down to Croatia. A very decent property and a handy overnight stop after a cheeky early finish on a Friday! There is a decent restaurant and a snug little Bierstübl downstairs if I remember right. Thanks for the reminder.

Ha! Yes, our hobby is somewhat of a niche one! I've given up trying to get friends involved. Previously they just thought I was nuts - now they know I am!

Concerto

That's pretty much my experience. For most there is far too much hassle and yroutro involved, so they prefer the easier route of travel packages.