corporate rate
 

I am trying to reserve a room at Marriott Cleveland East for Oct 8th for 3 nights. I need to get my corporate rate of $111.00 per night. The reservation clerk tells me there are no standard rooms available only rooms on the concierge level at $309 per night. And the rooms on the concierge level are not available for my corporate rate.
I call sales at the hotel and they give me the same story. This has worked in the past.
I get online and reserve a non-concierge level room at $269.00 per night that was not available via reservation line.
Any suggestions on what I should try next? Should I call reservations back?
Jim

This might not help you in any way but I have several times tried to use my corporate rate and the marriott site says something like "rooms for this code are not available" and still offers the same room type - most often standard in my case- with way higher price than my corporate rate. I have never called and tried my luck thou, just stayed elsewhere. Maybe they only honor corporate rates as long as there are many enough rooms of that type left?

OT: Is it ok to discuss corporate rates and their logic etc at FT? Because I wonder why at some properties my corporate rate is even higher than standard rate, and sometimes it's so much lower that I can hardly believe it.

Inventory can change at any time, so keep trying your corporate rate as you get closer to your desired date. I make a habit of this even with a confirmed room! Sometimes there are specials that can beat what was available earlier. Just remember to check your cancellation date and don't cancel until the new rate is booked!

Discussing corporate rate processes is fine, disclosing the actual rate codes is frowned upon (even though many are public). When looking for the best rates, I check property specials, corporate, AAA, and selected rate codes. Even for national rates like AAA there can be a significant difference in neighboring properties. It is up to each property to load the rates they are willing to accept.

I know some of our corporate rates are a set $.

So for instance it is always $150.
But the hotel may have rates as high as $300 during high season and $100 or less on off times (and weekends).

Others, the rate varies.
For instance I have yet to figure out the pattern for NY where there is sometimes a $200 difference week to week on corporate rate.

I have seen similar of AAA, where it will sometimes be more expensive the regular rate.

I've only tried to call once when my corporate rate was not available but standard rooms were, and was simply told that there were no more rooms available at the corporate rate. Seeing as how the corporate rate is often much lower than the standard rate, especially in OP's case, I understand why they might put a cap on the number of people that can book that rate. And in the one situation I was referring to, I know others had booked that rate because one of them was my boss.

As far as I know OP is SOL, but as Roger said I would probably keep checking back online.

Try booking the nights separately, I often do this and just use a AAA rate for the night my corporate rate is not available.

My company not only has negotiated corporate rates, but also blocked space rates. I am on a long term project, staying at the same hotel, and when ever I have trouble getting a room at our rate, I call the in-house reservations / sales office for assistance. I've never had an issue getting accomodated. However, I've stayed there nearly every week for the past 6 months. YMMV.

To be fair, even when I worked with a different company and stayed with a different chain, I've done the same thing and it's generally worked, unless there's a big conference in town or holidays.

They have a fixed number of rooms available at the corporate rate. When they're gone, you get what's left. It's annoying when you can see there are rooms available, either at rack or via points, but you can't get them at your corp rate. I have tried mailing guest relations at various hotels when this happens and most still won't release another room. The only ones that do are where I stay very regularly. I have noticed that as time gets closer to your stay date, more rooms tend to magically appear.

deleted, company policy