vd0t

Apologies if this was covered elsewhere.

My question is: are these stackable? I have claimed a free night award up to 40k as part of my annual choice benefit. Can I combine this with 5th night free on award and effectively pay for 3 nights and get 2 nights free (up to 40k).

Thanks!

BrightlyBob

vd0t

bonvoi

Hi folks,

I originally wanted to book a 5 night award stay from Tuesday 12/31/2019 through Sunday 1/5/2020.

Unfortunately, award inventory is only released once every week in one batch every Sunday morning EST. So award nights for departures through 1/4/2020 were released last week, and this Sunday, the night 1/4/2020 -> 1/5/2020 should be released and bookable.

However, I didn't want to wait for that last night to be bookable, because at the hotel I am looking at, 12/31->1/1 was almost already completely sold out. So I booked an award stay 12/31->1/4, and a few days after booking it, the night 12/31->1/1 did indeed show no more award inventory as expected - so I was glad I did my booking.

My question now is - how should I proceed on Sunday when the award inventory for the missing night 1/4->1/5 becomes available. Ideally, I want the "5th night free" deal to apply. What are my options?
1. Book a new reservation for just the last night, and not get the 5th night free benefit
2. Book a new reservation for just the last night, and ask a call center representative to combine the reservations - will this work? Will they be able to re-credit me the 5th night that making the second booking required?
3. Cancel my existing booking, hope that the room will become available again for award booking, and then book the 5 nights with the 5th night free. Is this safe? Or is there no guarantee that the released room will immediately be bookable as an award stay again? On legacy Starwood, I know for a fact that if a hotel was sold out, and I cancelled a reservation, that the room would typically not show up immediately, but sometimes later (after a few hours). How is this behavior on Marriott's booking system? Would people go this route?
4. Or should I do any of the above not online, but with a call center representative?

What would people recommend?

The most important thing for me is that I can get the whole stay on points (and not lose what I already have confirmed). It would be a very much appreciated nice to have to enjoy the benefits of the 5th night free option.

Thanks for your help!

silverforumsurf

MSPeconomist

kkl

Happy

Do you use the Point Advance so now you see 5 nights are under 1 reservation so you can later apply the pts with 5th night free?

nexusCFX

The responses here are overthinking this. As long as they release award space for the same room, you can just do a change of reservation online. Even if there's no more award rooms left on the dates already reserved, you can still extend off the existing reservation. I've done this before and I just tried it with a dummy points advance booking for the last award room left at a particular hotel to confirm it still works.

RogerD408

Actually, you want to be careful here. When you go to modify a rez, the system first cancels the existing rez and then attempts to book a new stay. There is no guarantee your four nights will return to award inventory right away, if at all and you're out of luck. I suggest you first book your five-night stay to get the 5th night free. Only after that goes through do you cancel your original 4-night stay. There have been reports of CSRs saying they can do it but then find out they did it wrong and there's no way for them to recover what you lost. Of course what has happened in the past is with the previous system and I doubt anyone has experience with the current system.

nexusCFX

As I said in my post above, you can just modify it online. Clicking "edit" on your reservation does not make any irreversible changes, and if nothing comes up when putting your new dates you can just click the button to go back to your reservation without making changes. I just tried this with my five night booking at the RC Kyoto which definitely would not go back into inventory if cancelled because the hotel is oversold in the base level room during that time.

OP can't do this anyway because the hotel has no awards left on new years.

kkl

yyzflyer

I have recent experience with this, having had a 4-day award reservation and needing to add a fifth. Although the fifth day became available as needed (i.e. king bed vs. 2 doubles) I was unable to do this online because only 2-double rooms were available for at least one day of my existing booking. I would have had to take 2 doubles for the entire stay. After 45-minute wait for a live agent, she confirmed that I could not extend my existing booking even though inventory was available, since I was asking for a king bed for days that one was not available. Even though I already had one, no more were available to confirm the entire booking. There was nothing she could do to change this. I suggested if I cancelled my existing booking, freeing up the king bed room, then immediately re-booked I might be successful. She wished me good luck. It didn't work and I wound up cancelling the entire reservation and booking at a nearby property.

silverforumsurf

You have to call, get someone really competent and they have to do this manually; sometimes working with the property's in-house reservation department.

You can't do this automatically because when you or the agent tries to "edit" the booking, what it does is look for a brand new reservation. It doesn't take into account your existing booking at all so if one of the nights you already booked is sold out, it won't let you edit

But 95%+ they'll make it happen if you HUCA enough

yyzflyer

I don't disagree with you (sorry for double-neg), but my time is worth more than staying endlessly on hold. It's much easier to move to another hotel 5 miles away that has no problem with a 5-night booking. I have been dealing with several Marriott CS issues lately, including disappearing points and certificates. They don't respond to emails, other than acknowledging receiving them, and yesterday's hold time for Plat was 65 minutes.