To add insult to injury, after the OP queried the property about the egregious charge, the manager actually told him the charge could have been avoided by checking in for the first night. Yet he was not advised of that option when he phoned to say he was delayed.

As far as I know, the hotels doing that are charging a cancellation penalty of one night's rent (at a reasonable rate).

The Revenue Director at St. Regis Deer Valley actually did require proof that a flight was cancelled and could not get another flight the same day...

Yeah, it's not unreasonable for HR to ask for a death certificate when you take a day off to attend your grandma's funeral.

But who would?

Like many things on FT, analogies almost never work.

The former is a property apparently owned by entities which seemingly don't want award / redemption business and therefore don't care that they insist on something which may be offensive. The latter is an employer of a person whom he presumably values and does not want to lose because the employee feels mistrusted.

I read my analogy again and found it perfectly understandable.

Has it been proven the hotel cares more about revenue booking customers? If one arrived late on a revenue booking, does the property show more empathy on the no-show charge?

IMO, if a manager asks for proof/evidence from what a customer claims, he might not be fit for the role.

Incidentally, the person who brought me to my room at a Fairmont in Switzerland today told me she used to be a Butler here. She said it was a beautiful property... And that flights always delayed.

She didn't know anything about the outrageous fee thing. But if flights always delayed, I am guessing the property will charge a lot of no show fees.

Again, the risks are too high for guests. Not worth staying here until they change policies.

UPDATE: This has finally been resolved. In particular, I received a refund of $2,226 from the Aspen St. Regis, which includes the $1,000 no show charge for each of 2 rooms plus tax. It took a little over 2 months to get this resolved but I am glad to finally be able to put this behind me.

I am very grateful to everyone on this forum who provided advice on how to get this resolved. I am also grateful to any and all Marriott (and Aspen St. Regis) personnel that helped get this favorably resolved. Fortunately, I was able to get the refund without taking legal action and without disputing the charge on my credit card (there were conflicting viewpoints on whether or not this latter tactic would have ultimately been effective). In the end, I believe patient persistence and patient escalation moved this to a favorable resolution. Specifically, I followed closely the advice offered in post #508 and fortunately did not need to involve Elliott Advocacy. I believe the email to Mr. Sorenson was the one that finally moved things along but my guess is that all the earlier emails and efforts had to be exhausted before such an email would have been effective. My understanding is that ultimately it was the hotel manager that agreed to the refund but my guess is that this was done only after some pressure from Marriott because the hotel manager explicitly indicated an unwillingness to do this previously. Nonetheless, I am grateful she came around regardless as to the reasoning. Finally, I believe my particular facts were helpful. That is, the fact that I booked under SPG and my confirm emails indicated that I could opt to forfeit points in lieu of any no show charge probably helped.

I am hopeful that Marriott will publicly update its policy as relates to this type of situation. If not, this will make make me (and I suspect many others) very hesitant to make higher end points bookings. The problem is greatly exacerbated on 5 nights points bookings at such properties because you might be trading a refund of zero points for a hefty one night charge if your flight is delayed.

Thanks very much for this update and congratulations! ^

I've been following this thread with interest, and it has certainly caused me to be wary of this type of booking situation.

Thanks for the update!

^

To save others the time of hunting it down, here's the link to the post referenced by OP: Post 508

And hotel owners and managers around the world groan in pain at this outcome.

Sound like the hotel got strong armed by Marriott.

No, only those greedy hotel owners who wanted to gouge their customers at every opportunity would be disappointed. The rest of the world will be happy to see a fair outcome.

I think the lesson learned - if you make a high end booking with points - make sure you plan to show up in the booking period.