I think a lot depends upon the integrity of the property. If they are in the habit of stealing assigned rooms before you arrive, I would presume it would not matter how you "checked in". Now as more properties move to keyless and you do not need to stop by the desk before going to your room, then that habit will need to change. But it appears the keyless systems do monitor your location and could indicate if you've showed up yet and reassign your room on the fly.

Just like guests learn how to play the system, so do the properties.

An upgrade isn't guaranteed until you physically check in. VickiSoCal learned that in February when her hubby did mobile check-in & saw they had been upgraded to a great suite, and yet when they checked in not only did they not have the suite they didn't even get a room on the exec lounge. The property was full & they were able to sell the suite; presumably the same with the exec level rooms.

Cheers.

How do they monitor your location? I normally keep the location services on my phone turned off. If they do track your location, shouldn't this be revealed? To me, it's a big reason never to use mobile check in. BTW, when you do check in in advance, does the hotel give you the room number? [In the past, that was an advantage of doing an early check in with Hyatt . You could tell people how to contact you through the hotel before leaving home. IIRC this was how Hyatt promoted it in the early days, back before cell phones.]

I am not sure of all the settings, but the app probably has permission to use your location, be it GPS or network (you can see what you agreed to when installing the app), to notify the property of your pending arrival and presuming you will be at the property vs the phone being in a different city and not showing up at all. Granted there are flaws with any system, but this sounds pretty solid for most cases.

4 times at least we have had upgraded rooms not pan out on arrival. Both using online checkin and not.

Upgrade chances - mobile vs. regular Check-in
 

Doing a long weekend trip to the L.A. area. Have been fortunate enough to get decent upgrades over the past few years as a Gold, but usually, I've been checking in at the desk mostly.

Anyone know if checking in on the mobile app in advance will trigger an upgrade request for eligible members, and if so, if it works well through there or if there is an advantage to do so? Or is it better to just check-in at the desk and ask there (or do the combo - check in with the app and then ask at the desk anyway)? If it makes a difference, it'll be a late check in (probably checking in around 1130pm).

Any advice would be helpful.

I would say chances of an upgrade with mobile are probably closer to zero than at the front desk. I have found upgrade chances at the front desk are about 5%. Lol!

There are quite a few threads asking the same question, so you might want to do a search for those & read the input. For the most part (not an absolute statement), FTers feel they have a better chance w/ regular than mobile.

Cheers.

My apologies. Mods can feel free to merge. I did try and do a search, but unfortunately, the FT search usually doesn't bring up anything useful. I always forget that Google is a much better way to search for FT threads.

Appreciate all the responses, though.

No worries. FT search does suck & 1/2 the time I can't find threads I started. I just wanted to mention there were other threads (I think the last one came up a couple of weeks ago). Maybe they can all get combined into a single thread.

Good luck with the upgrade!

Cheers.

Let's see, the variables are:I'm sure there are many more that I have missed, but there is no simple answer, no matter what.

If you know the property, then selecting the best available room via OLCI is the safest. But always ask when you arrive since things can change.

app check in and upgrade- gold status
 

So I just looked and turns out that those suggesting upgrades happen the day before are onto something. I checked the reservation on the app, and show I have been moved to a concierge level room (I'll save the merits of weather this is actually an upgrade or merely a dressing for another thread, since lounge is closed on weekends anyways).

We weren't suggesting, we were informing. It's not a certainty, but more likely if the hotel is not sold out the night before arrival.

On occasion, I've been able to view my upgrade to a suite a couple of days before arrival.

I wanted to try the app to check in while in flight, but...

--GoGo wouldn't allow the app to log in (GoGo problem or Marriott app problem?)

--And you can't use the regular website to check in online (IIRC, Hilton allows this)

Ew.

Last month I used the app to check into a Marriott in the Colorado Springs area. Got the notification that my room was ready but the hotel was not ready with keys at all. Had to do the full check-in process just as I would have done without using the app. I didn't even try doing checkout with it because I didn't trust that particular Marriott to handle it correctly. YMMV I suppose?