rhg247

Yeah, that's exactly what I thought too. I shifted my reservation in April from PG to PS. Lost one lounge, gain 3. Interesting.

BabyKuma

hailstorm

Interesting new elite benefit here:

Free access to other lounge - The Prince Sakura Tower Tokyo, Autograph Collection - Official website

Marriott Platinum members staying here may also use the executive lounges at the adjacent Grand Prince Takanawa and Grand Prince New Takanawa hotels.

MSPeconomist

hockeyinsider

Presumably, this also applies to guests with titanium and ambassador elite statuses.

hailstorm

Congratulations on finding a way to complain about a hotel doing something nice for its elite guests while taking nothing away in the process.

I think of The Prince Sakura Tower, Grand Prince Takanawa, and Grand Prince New Takanawa all as one big resort. Now there are even more ways to take advantage of that.

Yes. Platinum and above. Also Seibu Prince Club Platinum status, but I'm probably the only person reading this that has that.

kkl

hailstorm

By the way, the arrangement is reciprocal; people staying in club rooms in the other hotels can also access the other lounges, including The Prince Sakura.

Free access to other lounge - Grand Prince Hotel Takanawa - Official website
Free access to other lounge - Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa - Official website

So I would *guess* that other lounges are of similar quality.

Busymann

This is incorrect.
I saw inventory pretty much disappear up until November '19 and multiple months were available when I checked in November '18. I wanted this hotel in the summer due to it's proximity to Shinagawa station. I complained, got a rep from the hotel via email, and he advised he could book me via points.

My stay was for 2 weeks so it didn't just magically become available. The rooms are not booked up all of a sudden for over 6 months. They knocked it out of inventory.

While I initially pursued my complaint, I went ahead and booked the Westin Tokyo. It's a little farther from Ebisu station compared to Shinagawa to PST but it looks like a better location, a little livelier, larger rooms, and certainly has a better breakfast. The drawbacks seem to be it looks less modern and is farther away from a station. Shinagawa station is also more of a hub. The shinkansen goes there and so does the NEX. I'll be adding 10 min more travel time for Osaka, Nagano, and NRT via NEX.

Anyway, I've been looking at availability at this hotel since about November (still was deciding the best place to stay), so I watched it go poof in an instant. The fact that someone contacted me to tell me it was available for 2 weeks straight on points during the summer tells me this was no accident and certainly not standard rooms getting booked up all of a sudden. I appreciated them getting back to me either way but it may have been a blessing. Westin it is.

nexusCFX

I've made bookings after when you checked. Here's a picture of one that I booked in January.
https://i.imgur.com/JDbLyNL.png

When I made that post in December, which was after you checked but was also months ago, I showed that there was award inventory even during a period where another poster claimed the hotel was blocking all awards. The only days where there were no awards was when there were no standard rooms available for booking with cash; this was directly verifiable on the Marriott website at the time I made my post, and those rooms weren't even available booking through Prince so it wasn't an inventory issue. Again, when I made that post, you literally could go confirm on the Marriott site and the Prince site that any day with no awards had no standard rooms available.

It does look like their award inventory has been pulled. That is a separate matter than the matter I posted about. Unless you have a time machine to go evaluate the state of the inventory at the time I made my post months ago it's rather unfounded to just assert that my post was incorrect, especially given the supporting evidence provided within, and the fact that it discusses a completely different circumstance than the one you're encountering.

This is probably something to talk to @Marriott Bonvoy Lurker about, since having all the award inventory disappear for a hotel for the entire year could just as easily be a rate issue or an IT issue rather than a malicious action.

Busymann

If you made a booking after the time I said bookings were available then that's irrelevant since, well, I knew that already.

Point being, they are either playing games with the availability or, well, I dunno, that's pretty specific to knock out points booking until Nov. You were very condescending to that poster and I've found that he was correct.

I will give credit that Prince Hotels emailed to rectify the situation. However, the average joe would just turn away and book elsewhere which I wonder if that was the point.

The difference for me was that I was pretty consistently checking and watched it go 'poof' before my eyes. I was checking multiple dates and then I watched multiple dates go away in an instant.

I saw later a travel blog post indicating other places where this happened pretty much instantly to confirm I wasn't jumping to conclusions. No need in the future to be umm, smarta++ed to legit frustrated travelers.

They might correct.

nexusCFX

You said they disappeared some time after you checked in November. I made that booking in January. When did you see availability disappear? I clearly haven't checked availability here as recently as you since all my bookings are already made, but I thought when you mentioned November 2018 that you meant awards disappeared at that point, so I felt it was useful to note that I was able to make one in January.

Just to be clear, I don't see any availability now even in November or December 2019, or even going into 2020, so I think the window where award bookings aren't available is basically the entire booking calendar. If you know of any dates that are available please let me know.

Except I demonstrated with irrefutable evidence that it was wrong. It was not condescending; I simply called out posts without any evidence to back up what they were saying which wastes other people's time, is not a useful contribution to this forum, and thus should be discouraged. If they had actually taken steps to advance the discussion in a reasonable manner by providing evidence for their assertions, then I would have responded to them accordingly.

In your case, you are absolutely 100% correct that something is going on with inventory, there's no doubt about it based on what can be seen on the Marriott site. Standard rooms ARE available on various dates all year long, and yet the website won't even bring up the flexible date calendar for award bookings. This is different from what was claimed about April, where even now there are still no standard rooms now, which is why there were no awards available.

But assuming that something nefarious is going on is kind of jumping to conclusions.

It may very well be that the property is playing games. I've actually emailed the lurker team about this issue even though I don't have any plans to make more bookings here this year. They can identify if the property is screwing around and rectify that if that is the case. I just think it's worth noting that it could very well be a case of IT issues or rates not being loaded properly, which has happened with other properties in the past and the lurker team was able to get the problem solved. There are a lot of cases where what seems to be malice is really just Marriott's IT ineptitude. This could be one, or it could be the property is breaking the rules and needs to be brought in line; I'm not going to assume one way or the other.

nexusCFX

An update for @Busymann, although probably too late to alter travel plans. The issue is being resolved, and awards are now booking into the corner king room which costs more than the base deluxe room, but are also lesser in number. There's availability for parts of April in that room type, and all throughout the year up until the end of August. It looks like rates for that room haven't been loaded past that point since it cannot be booked with cash or points from Sept 1 onward.

Busymann

Thanks. I know. I switched to Prince Sakura already. All points. It magically opened up. LOL

Funny enough, a rep from Prince Hotels emailed me awhile ago to tell me he could book it before it opened on the web but I didn't bite. I knew it wasn't really booked up. Thanks again, either way. I couldn't post about it due to this silly post restriction probably enacted to curb spam.

lilkid28

Just have an upcoming stay on the last week of April. Ironically, didn't see availability in early March using points, and around mid March, saw availability open up for the Corner King room and booked 5 nights for 240k points.