48-Hour Guaranteed Availability Question
 

I am confused in regards to the 48-hour guaranteed availability that is provided for platinum members. I am currently staying at a full service Marriott and inquired to a reservation upon my return for July 26th-August 17th. I was told the hotel is completely booked for the majority of those days. I asked the front desk clerk if I could make a reservation as a platinum member using the 48-hour guaranteed availability clause for a platinum member and was told no. I understand that as it is not within the 48-hour window.

So, what happens if I attempt to make a reservation for these dates on July 25th? Should I get a room then for those 22 days based upon the 48-hour guarantee? If I do get the room, what is the normal price I can be looking at?

The answer is probably quite simple and I missing it somewhere.

Thanks

Lane

The room has to be booked a minimum of 48 hours in advance. if you wait until July 26, you will be unable to exercise the guarantee until July 28.

Actually, Lane, it's a 48-hour CUTOFF, not a 48-hour WINDOW. What that means is that you're guaranteed a room (except in very specific circumstances that are quite rare) if you make your reservation 48 hours or more in advance.

Try calling the platinum reservations line rather than booking directly through the hotel. Although the hotel staff SHOULD know what to do, sometimes they're not as well-versed in special cases as they should be. Good luck, and keep in mind that you'll be paying the full rack rate (typically pretty high), but at least you'll have a confirmed room.

Thanks for the insight and answers to my questions. I will give Marriott reservations a call and see what happens.

Lane, if you do make a reservation through the Platinum line, give the hotel itself a call the next day and confirm. You might also want to follow up with e-mail to the manager.

I have found that the 48-hour Plat rule works, but that you sometimes have to give it a little shove in order to get it to work properly.

As a new Plat. one of the benefits I needed to use was the 48 hour guarantee.

I attempted to book at 3 different cities for business in October – all 3 did not qualify.

The first – “City wide event” for a convention

The second – Contact hotel – no availability and no reason

The third – “Football game weekend”

Is there a set number of nights the hotel can block out? Is this common?

Have you tried booking online? My experience were if I signed on to the web and the site recognized me as a PLT, all the hotels within the search area would show up on a list as available. After I click RESERVE, the confirmation page would give me a confirmation number along with a message saying something like: the hotel is oversold but due to your platinum status they have garanteed the reservation.

I have not had any trouble doing that. Have I been lucky??

You and me both. This is the platinum perk that I use/enjoy the most and I have never been denied a room at a hotel when I have booked online. A couple of times I had to change reservation dates and phoning the platinum # I got the changes to the dates I wanted in cases where the hotel was sold out. ^

There is a city-wide event (convention) in BWI next week and I had no problem getting a room on-line with my status.

I tried online first, then called reservations – they said call the hotel.

I called the Plat line and was told “don’t call the hotel, call reservations” I told them I called both, then replied “call the hotel.”

The woman on the Plat line was very unhelpful and just said “that’s the way life goes.”

Seriously considering why I made the attempt to get Plat.

Thanks.