Anyone ever try booking a meeting room without showing up for the meeting? I assume one must go to the hotel at some point to sign paperwork and pay for the room, however.

Yes. I did it twice. No show no problem! Points and nights posted!

It's really easy. Everything can be done by email once you have the email address for the sales person at the hotel you want to book.

Rewarding events roll over?
 

Does anyone know if these events will roll owver to 2012?

IS the offer still good?

Had a real meeting end of October and was credited points and nights.

this has been around for a few years now. just buried in other threads.

unreal!!
 

I've bookmarked this forum! Any FTers want to stop by in Manassas, Fairfax, Northern VA for a meeting? :D

Hi,

I am new to all of this....what does 10 elite nights transfer out to? 10 nights at any marriott locations?

Thanks,

Can't believe I jsut found out about this thread :D

LOL
 

Let's do it!!

has anyone held a meeting and stayed the night there as well? was wondering if I could charge the meeting to my room and then use a GC (saves 10%) to pay it off except for alittle bit that will close out to a VISA for MB credit for the actual stay

Not expecting 11 nights towards the MB just 1 but it should crank up 11 towards status no? or is it best to keep it separate from 1 another? and do them on 2 different days?

tia

to HiredGun
 

Will send you a PM once I get some dates with best rates. I guess Sat,Sun would work?

Just an FYI as I spent the better part of a week trying to figure out why none of the hotels I called would confirm the 10 elite nights. I called Marriott Rewards and was told that if you book a conference room at the standard rate and you receive Marriott points for the room you will receive 10 nights for the booking. Also after your second "meeting" you will receive triple bonus points for the meeting expenses however the triple bonus points may take up to 6 weeks to post.

So any hotel that says yes you will get Marriott Reward points for using our conference room will allow you to get the 10 nights. Be warned however that it is 10 nights per event so if you book the conf room on multiple days at the same hotel it will be considered one event. I haven't found any hotels offering meeting rooms for less than $100 but if anyone does find any it would be great for you to post them here.

I just did this today, will let you know how it posts to my account in a few days.

then the queation is if a person is also staying the night will they end up with 10 nights or 11 nights credited 10 for the meeting and 1 for sleeping over in a room

Id rather get the 1 night credited for sleeping there then 1000 MR pts for charging the meeting room to my room bill. I think I will simply make the meeting for the night after I checkout soa s to avoid any problems, of cause my crystal ball is showing me I most likely will get held up at my other functions of the day after checking out and might not make it back

So I checked out this morning and asked why the Meeting Room was not listed in my room charges and the desk clerk told me that it was their procedure that meeting room charges be charged separately. I made the reservations at the same time and they did not have my rewards number listed. So they did add it before I left.

Thanks I guess thats how they all will do it, yet a FS has no problem charging 10s of $1000 if you are doing a whole catered affair.

Has anyone had any success with this in the UK? I've tried to book 3 meetings now in different UK Marriott hotels (and different contacts each time) and none had heard of the 10 nights credit offer so I didn't complete the bookings.

I've just made Gold again and was looking to push up to Plat before the year is out using this method if only I could find a UK hotel to do it.. or can I book 'remotely' to a US cheap Marriott hotel and not turn up as another plan?

anyone in UK had any success?

UK based
 

Yes,

I had a couple of meetings in 2010 @ hotel near Manchester.

SM

25 $ extra is a deal killer but on the same time such people have a platinum status :rolleyes:

Can you pm me which hotel and what was the rate? Thanks.

well all I can say is I was able to arrange it for alot less then $25 less,and was up front exactly what I was up to and they had no problem whatsoever and offered me a price I never thought Id hear ( my 1st meeting is next week but since I will be overseas I will send an assoicate over to conduct the meeting for me, so till I get back I wont know if it all went AOK so till I know the story I wont give out any info even via PMs about the Hotel)

as to why the $25 was a deal killer simply 5 meetings @ $100 (I dont need 5) is $500 @ $125 you only get 4 meetings. If all I needed was 1 meeting then I would have gone for the $125 when a person needs more then just 1 meeting it adds up

the talks I had and those a friend had in another state, the rate they quote is usually high since they expect certain costs even w/o a reg set up, they will factor in a reg clean-up etc

thusly its best if you want the cheapest arte to simply from get go tell the sales rep why you need to have these meetings. also those with limited space dont want to put down a meeting say for $75 when they can get $250 for it from a party that actually needs it.So if you book say for 11/30 they wont want to give it away since theres a chance a legit party may call wanting it.

also there are different types of rooms and when you dont disclose everything they think its a real meeting with numerous people , when they know the story , then they can book you into a very small room that costs very little compared to the reg Meeting Room

I suggest that you dont use the Meeting forms on the Hotels or MRs site as they will quote you a very high amount , best bet call the Hotel in mind and ask for the Sales Rep for info on booking a meeting

just what I was looking for Thanks for posting this, 1st 1 down

Living in Annapolis, I used to have my option of a one day a week meeting... in Manassas or Boston. I did the Manassas drive once, after that it was segment running up to BOS.

I do legitimate meetings with my work so I can tell you this. You will set up the contract for a meeting room and then have a master account for it. You set up the room on your own. Unless you're doing 10 rooms, most hotels won't even include rooms on the contract. So you will get 10 nights for an event and 1 night for your stay. The meeting room will be settled on master account. The room is settled by you. Do not under any circumstance get your room settled on the master account for the meeting because you will lose points and stay credit for that room.

When I do sleeping rooms, I always specify each person pays his own so nobody loses points and benefits. Then each person expenses them.

BTW, I appreciate the ingenuity of people here, but I do hope these fake meetings don't eventually cause the end of my legitimate rewarding events bonuses. Doing a real meeting is hard work. The bonus points and reward nights make it a bit easier to take all the hard work. If people are doing this for no good reason and no work involved, Marriott may decide to take away elite nights. After all, Marriott is the only chain that is so generous with elite night rewards on meetings. So I'm asking you guys to please not abuse it and kill it for those of us who work hard to get the same benefits.

^
I wish this thread would disappear.

I would be willing to bet there's less than 25 people who do fake/fluff meetings to get to a certain threshold. 25 in the grand scheme of MR is a drop in the bucket.

I agree 100%. PLUS, Marriott is making $100, or whatever, per "meeting" so what do they really care!?

Probably more than that, but this thread was quite active in the past and didn't cause a problem. And, as SacTownGuy points out accurately:

So you spilled the beans on your entire plan to a hotel sales manager and they were on board with it?

I'm going to come up 9 nights short this year and was hoping to renew with one of these events - it would be much easier to organize if I could just tell them what's up.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I am not sure if it only applies to me, but my usual courtyard is more than willing to sell me these kind of meetings. It's better than leaving their meeting room empty while earning nothing.

as I posted up thread, I originally called hoping to secure a $100 rate, but was told it was $250 for 1/2 a day. when I mentioned Id need it for an hour or so and didnt need any set-up or food/drink it went down to $125. I tried about if it would be cheaper at night etc and she explained how once the room is used it must be cleaned and that they were certain set-up things that had to be done. I told her Id get back to you.

In the mean time a friend in the Mid-west was told if he booked it day of or 1 day before they could lower the rate but anything else would require a hgher rate.

When I called my place back she was taken aback a bit so I felt why not simply come clean so that she would understand why there would be any set-up or clean up. And it was perfectly fine, Im not saying it will be that way with all the hotels.

I have another meeting this coming week and still waiting for last weeks to post.I would feel alot better once the 1st one posts

Does anyone know the meeting rate for hotels in the Southern California area?

its probably just like by me, each area has its own rates

try for a non corparate park setting or do a CPS on the weekend when they should be dead; I found those Hotels that had high rooms rates also wanted the most for the meeting rooms

best is to simply call up and speak diretly with the sales rep

My nights from last weeks meeting finally posted yesterday, unfortunately Im overseas and wont make it back in time for todays meeting , so I will have to send someone in my place ;) a good thing everthing was signed the other week and set up for the charging

Now at my first meeting ;)

Sales and hotel staff are great, but was unable to shave rate below $175 and now I see some add on "service charges" :(

Not sure how long I need to stay, may slip out side door soon...

---------------------------------

Addendum: 10 EQN for first meeting posted 5 days later - Now I'm a first time Gold! :cool: 1 down, 2 to go (have separate written contracts for both so hopefully no issues).

I booked two meetings attended both and did not get the 10 elite nights and on one of them I didn't even get the points.

Some things I learned. Marriott Rewards will not help you at all if you do not have a signed contract. You cannot get a signed contract after the meeting, supposedly their system will not reprint the contracts once the event takes place.

A receipt is not sufficient. The hotel manager calling Marriott Rewards and saying you had an event is not sufficient. You must have a signed contract before the event.

Just FYI. Also the hotel must code the meeting as an event and not as a stay. I have to say it was the biggest waste of $50 & $75.

On the other hand, thanks for letting people know how to do it right! ^

Bruce

Thank you for this valuable information.

Generally speaking, can someone explain me the sense of this whole "promotion"? Why would people book eight meeting rooms and pay about 800 $ for the Platinum status? I don't see much difference to the Gold status.

Is the Platinum status 800 $ valid? I don't think so!

Perhaps the OP is scheduling real meetings (although this thread has several other OPs bragging about scheduling fake meetings) and just taking the nights credits offered for such meetings the OP has scheduled.
If the OP's costs are $100 per meeting then sure, the OP got 80-nights credit, and qualified for MR Plat, for $800.

The thread that refuses to die.