Tantamount to blackout at Delta Royal Canadian of Banff May 1--Oct. 19?!
 

As I experienced in 2017 and Mwk190 reported in Post #22 of https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marriott-rewards/1886590-less-reward-availability.html, the Delta Royal Canadian of Banff once again has zero award availability for 5.6 months in and around this summer by designating only a few rooms as Standard Queens and the rest as "Premier Queens," many of which have fireplaces!
Sometimes 1--3 nights beforehand, this hotel will deign to offer an award room or 2, but other than that, forget it! Plus, with the Fairmont gone over to Accor, all hotels in Banff except for the Best Western are independent non-chain hotels which rent only for revenue, which pretty much means no award stays in Banff!
Now at the dawn of Bonvoy, will there be somebody with the task of bringing this hotel into compliance?

What do you think compliance is? The practice of designating rooms with special characteristics as other than Standard awards (room type, view, high floor) goes back at least fifteen years with SPG. I'm not surprised they have a separate inventory of fireplace rooms. IIRC there was a California resort which had just four standard rooms according to Lurker.

Good catch. I was looking at this very property recently and noticed that too. I honestly thought they were exiting Marriott or doing a renovation or something.

It is outrageous that they do not have to play by the Marriott rules! How nice that it appears to be at the hotel's discretion...

It's Marriott...they don't care and they aren't going to enforce unless the bloggers get involved and/or we can raise enough ruckus w/the Lurkers to help us

I'm afraid that we don't have much we can do about the legacy MR brands since they are allowed to limit the number of award rooms they offer.

3.2.n. The Company has a “No Blackout Dates” policy, which means that, subject to the limitations and exclusions below, Participating Properties have standard rooms available every day for Award Redemptions. These limitations and exclusions are:

i. Participating Properties from the following Brands may cap the number of standard rooms available for redemption on a limited number of days: The Ritz-Carlton®, EDITION®, JW Marriott®, Marriott Hotels®, Delta Hotels®, Autograph Collection® Hotels, Renaissance® Hotels, Gaylord Hotels®, Courtyard®, SpringHill Suites®, Protea Hotels®, Fairfield by Marriott®, AC Hotels®, Moxy® Hotels, Residence Inn®, TownePlace Suites®.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Social Media Specialist
Marriott International

[email protected]

Yup - aware that the change to the better SPG terms promised to us got walked back pretty quickly...I guess I was thinking more of the cases of hotels who are saying "no rooms available for awards" or the like.

That turns out to be a global issue that we hope to have resolved on February 5th or shortly thereafter.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Social Media Specialist
Marriott International

[email protected]

Still not what I was thinking about :) I was thinking more along the lines of the Al Maha and JW Guanacaste brouhahas of recent weeks (which I guess aren't really about award space, but rather getting hotels to actually comply w/the Marriott rules)

So like half the hotel portfolio brands (more by numbers of properties I bet) can diddle award availability however they want. Just go ahead and remove the no blackout thing from the T&C already.

So is this limit 365?

For award availability, SPG properties operate under old SPG rules and Marriott properties operate under old Marriott (fake "no blackout") rules under the "integrated" program?

I could have sworn I read somewhere the new integrated program was adopting the positive features of the SPG program. I guess I'm mistaken.

I looked at the Delta option when I was in Banff, but honestly it's really not even a good option. The number of points needed are way too high for the area and cash pricel. Plus I'm not even sure what the breakfast situation is since it's a Delta. I was able to find much better options for cheaper in Banff.

I think 365 days a year would probably be outside anyone's understanding of "...on a limited number of days...", but yes, each legacy group is currently working under their former legacy rules.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Social Media Specialist
Marriott International

[email protected]

A good article about the walking back of T&Cs

https://thepointsguy.com/guide/marri...icy-worthless/

Re: Lurker & CPRich above: The zero availability at Banff is continuous from May 1--Oct. 19, which is (3x31) + (2x30) + 19 = 172 out of 365, plus maybe some more around Christmas & New Year's! Which does not sound like a "limited number" of dates to me. At worst, if they required an extra 5000 points per night for a "Premier Room," that would be tolerable.
SP03, you're probably right in low season! But given that rooms there fetch ~C$400 a night ++ in summer, and most other hotels >C$300, 35K Bonvoys per night is a better option IMO.