carrotjuice

carrotjuice

nexusCFX

This actually sounds more appealing than the modern iteration of make a green choice.

mahasamatman

For those who might be interested, it looks like this hotel is setting 17 March - 04 May as "high season". It's easy to tell because they've removed all award availability during this period waiting for the high season program to become effective. It's too bad hotels feel they have to play these anti-consumer games. Luckily, we got our Golden Week reservation in before they figured out how to game the system.

nexusCFX

This is incorrect. All of March up until March 22 has award space. There is sparse award availability during April. On the days where no awards are open there are also no base rooms bookable via Marriott, or directly via Prince. Japanese hotels being sold out of base-level rooms during this time of the year is what one should expect. I have seen four different people on this forum holding old Cat8 travel package reservations here for that time of year.

carrotjuice

mahasamatman

I was looking for multi-day stays, which is why I saw nothing. Searching for single days, I see exactly two days between 23 March and 28 April. But I'm still willing to bet that those days will magically open up once the high season rules go into effect and they can officially charge more.

nexusCFX

You don't seem familiar with Japan's peak travel periods. If the hotel was just blocking award space, you'd be able to book the standard Deluxe room through Prince directly which is a 100% independent booking system from what they use for Marriott, and uses different inventory with certain rooms sometimes only being available through one platform or the other (corner rooms are often not available on Marriott when they are on Prince). Heck, under Marriott's nonsense "no blackout" rules, they could still put that room up for cash on the Marriott site and just not make awards available. Why would they stop selling those rooms entirely during peak travel time if they just wanted to stop award bookings? It makes zero sense.

I have two one-week bookings during the time where there are no more Deluxe rooms available. As I said, many other people on this forum do as well. Not only is it a peak travel time in Japan with sakura season, golden week, etc, but this was a well-known property moving from OC8 to NC6 so there's the added load of people redeeming travel packages before the merger. I can tell you that during the week where I have those two rooms, five of the Marriott/SPG properties in Tokyo have no base rooms left. The same goes for properties in Kyoto, RC Kyoto is super full from late March until early May.

mahasamatman

I am, but I still smell a program abuse. They certainly wouldn't be the first to play with inventory to skirt the rules.

nexusCFX

I think I've explained pretty clearly that there are no base level rooms left which is why there are no awards, so I'm not going to bother any further if you're not even going to attempt to provide some logical basis for your accusation. It's okay (and mature) to admit when you were mistaken instead of just continuing to be vague and moving the goalposts, like when I noted that there were some award rooms when you thought there were none so you just decided to pick some more convenient dates for your argument.

FlyingFrZ

Planning to stay at this property for a couple days in August. I was surprised that the hotel doesn't have any suites available during my dates. Checked a few random dates as well and no suites. Is there something going on with their suite inventory?

Also how does this property compare with the Prince Gallery?

nexusCFX

The hotel has only one suite, and it has two double beds which is pretty weird. Prince Gallery is superior in every regard and often priced well via BRG rates. Given that August in Japan is death heat season with lower tourism, I would look to see if you can pull off a good rate at the PG.

rhg247

I have an upcoming stay at the Sakura Tower and see this on their website about Plat+ having access to "other lounge"?
Free access to other lounge - The Prince Sakura Tower Tokyo, Autograph Collection - Official website

Am I reading this right? ...In addition to the Sakura lounge, they're offering access to neighboring hotels' lounges as well?

kaizen7

kkl