Problem with upgrade at Residence Inn?
 

Hello everyone,

I was staying at a RI in Miami last week. This stay was my second week at the hotel. I am staying at a rate I received because I am doing work at a local hospital. When I checked in, I asked the person at the front desk if there was an upgrade available. She responded with "there are no upgrades left under the rate you are paying". I was quite shocked by this because I have negotiated rates before and been upgraded without a problem.

I know this is something minor, but after getting up to the room I realized this was the smallest problem. Am I right in being confused by what I was told or is what I was told correct?

Any questions, let me know.

Thanks,

Zach

Unfortunately, Marriott has excluded their extended stay properties from their elite upgrade benefits. So technically, you shouldn't have received an upgrade due to your elite status at all. As far as Marriott's Rewards program goes, the hotel is correct.

Now with that said, I guess a given hotel might try to go above and beyond the minimum program requirements and provide upgrades. And if they did that, I guess they could base the upgrades on any criteria they want (i.e. rate, elite status, etc.)

In attempt to directly answer your questions: yes and maybe. You don't have adequate information to come to a logical conclusion which leads to the confusing part.

One hypothetical example: Perhaps there are 5 plats checking in that evening and only 3 rooms for upgrades. They have blocked the 3 rooms for the Plats paying higher rates. Then her comment "there are no upgrades left under the rate you are paying" would make sense in that context and what you were told would have been correct.

Then again that could just be a standard line she uses because she doesn't really know and that is what her manager told her to say. In this case what you were told could have been incorrect.

So as I said at the beginning, there is not adequate information to form a factual answer, only a bunch of supposition.

Not that it really matters as pointed out already by hhoope01.

Being told that your upgrade is related to your rate, is completely unsupported by the rules. I would call them on it.

I wasn't aware that the rules now excluded RI from all upgrades. For example, rooms with better views, rooms in better locations, etc. http://www.marriott.com.au/Channels/...platinum-au.mi

By T&C suites are excluded. Kind of a deal breaker for RIs since pretty much anything you could be upgraded to is a suite.

Suites are, of course, excluded at all properties, not just RI. But the OP didn't describe what sort of upgrade he/she was interested in and I thought it painting with an overly broad brush to say that ALL upgrades were excluded, rather than upgrades to one and two bedroom suites. Again, there may be situations at particular properties where one seeks an upgrade based on something other than room configuration. Whatever the case, the answer given by the property to the request, as reported by the OP, was inaccurate (per the rules) and inappropriate. The rules provide no nexus between rate paid and upgrades.

I do believe there used to be an entry in Marriott's T&Cs specifically limiting RI upgrades to be from a studio to a 1 bedroom suite. But sometime over the last year or two, they dropped that and now exclude all suite upgrades as a guaranteed part of the upgrade program.

That is very true, but the hotel when assigning the upgrades which in my case has always been done in advance, may be in the position as I described in my previous post. Just because the T&C doesn't spell it out doesn't mean they don't use rate paid as a determining factor in assigning upgrades when there are less upgrade rooms available than the number of Plats checking in. As far as that is concerned the the T&C provides no guidance in this regard so my guess is that any hotel can use any method they see fit including rate paid.

On Tuesday March 16 my Hong Kong Renaissance reservation for the 17th showed Exec Level room. My Ren CC here in London which started on the 18th showed Club Level room online on the 17th. And my reservation at Dubai JW for tomorrow now shows Exec Level room whereas it did not a mere 5 hours ago. Now I don't know how RIs assign their upgrades, but if it is anything like FS properties then they do it in advance.

True, but this is different from "Marriott has excluded their extended stay properties from their elite upgrade benefits." The new rule or rule clarification, simply puts RI's in the same place as all other brands, that is that upgrades to suites are not an included benefit. So, if you reserve a studio, you can't rely on the benefit to secure an upgrade to a one or two bedroom suite. But, on the other hand, you could use the benefit to secure a studio that may (depending on the property) be considered an upgrade from a basic studio. See, for example, the Residence Inn Boston Harbor, where an allergy free studio sells for a higher rate than a regular studio. One would assume you could request an upgrade to such a room using the upgrade benefit. Same would be true of a better location (maybe with a view).

Starwood sends their hotels an ordered "suggested" upgrade list. That list is ordered by a number of attributes like revenue generation, nights stayed, rate, etc. The details behind the list are proprietary and not published, so we don't know exactly what goes into it.

Each hotel can use the list or not as it chooses, but Starwood does try to give some guidance to each hotel. I wonder if Marriott has anything similar or do they let each individual hotel decide completely on its own?

You may be correct. I was basing my original reply on socrate's reply in the http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...rades-ris.html thread. It is possible I misunderstood or misapplied his reply.

I don't disagree with this. But the words used by the clerk, as quoted by the OP, sound suspicious, as in they don't give upgrades to customers who don't pay some minimum rate. I've seen this happen. I also acknowledge that front desk clerks (particularly at non FS properties) are frequently unfamiliar with either the program or the way the property actually awards upgrades, and simply give answers as to their perceptions or guesses rather than reality.

And THAT is the reason that the very first thing I posted was:

"You don't have adequate information to come to a logical conclusion"

Due to inadequate info everything else in my first post was hypothetical, conjecture and/or supposition as noted by the use of the words "hypothetical" and "supposition".

Note that I was trying to answer the two specific questions asked by the OP:

1) Am I right in being confused by what I was told or 2) is what I was told correct?

I actually think my answers addressed those specific questions without going off tangent.

Marriott has always viewed Studio Suites & 1 Bedroom Suites as being "general" inventory...ie neither is an upgrade to the other

I agree with you on the first point...unfortunately extended stay hotels have never been included in upgrades due to the nature of their business model