downinit

Apparently, if you plan on going to a Tokyo IC, better to book multiple 1 night stays and have them linked together afterwards so you will get 10k/night. I was always tempted to sign up for AMB, but most of the IC's I have stayed at treated me well as Platinum, so I kept putting it off. Now it seems like I made the correct choice.

est-gratuite

It's a good idea, but i'm not sure it would work as most hotels have some rules about points earning if you check out and back in on the same day inside the same hotel.
You'd have to go down to reception to get your 10,000 points each day.
Would be curious to hear about it, in case anyone tries it.

clubman

Is it up to the hotel whether to offer $50 or 10k points or do they give a choice?

Personally, if I was refused an upgrade but saw rooms were available the hotel would be getting a one star review from me on Trip Advisor.

markis10

vsevolod4

This thread is from January 2019.
The new "guarantees" do take effect February 1st (for Royal Ambassadors) and March 1st (for Ambassadors).
So any posts prior to Feb 1st by RAs and prior to Mar 1st for As are irrelevant, unless one has invented time travel.

So ... have any Royal Ambassadors experienced the "guarantee" on or after February 1st?
And we can ask again for Ambassadors in March.

baroqen

I'm with Super Mario on this. Having extensive experience in the hotel industry, I will say that there are going to be very few hotels in the world that would choose to actively pay out of pocket for points over an upgrade. There are several reasons for this:

Most IHG properties have tons of micro-upgrades. Anyone on these boards that isn't used to the "high floor" upgrades by now has either been incredibly lucky or has been staying at only the handful of IHG properties that don't do this. The whole Superior, Deluxe, Superior with view, Deluxe with view, Executive, and even Club Floor upgrades (that don't actually include Club Access).

Points cost the hotel. This is an actual separate line item expense. An additional expense. Housekeeping is a sunk cost. Even in the much rarer suite upgrades, although a suite takes more room credits (time to clean) than a regular room, the theoretical housekeeping cost per room is still much less than the cost of 10k points... and the hotel is already paying for the housekeeper to be there anyway. Unless cleaning the suites will push the housekeeping staff into overtime, it makes no financial sense to literally give away money. Oh... and senior execs/owners typically hate to see the extra expense of points because that's a lot more visible on the budget than a tinyincrease in housekeeping budget.

It doesn't make financial sense. Many hotels run with empty suites even when all the rooms are full because most travelers simply don't want to pay for suites. A hotel typically can utilize these suites for upgrades, which frees up more standard rooms for additional cash revenue. HOWEVER, if the hotel usually runs near full suite capacity, then if you don't get a "free upgrade", you probably weren't going to get upgraded before the change anyway. Although many people on these boards are seeing ghosts everywhere (this post is a perfect example), few hotels will choose to upgrade you over selling it for cash if they could. At the same time, for the aforementioned reasons, few hotels would also choose to basically PAY YOU at real cost to the hotel, while denying you an upgrade that they can't sell anyway.

If I wanted to be one of the pessimists, I could potentially see more micro-upgrade levels showing up in inventories in the future, but not a rush to start paying out points.