Hi All,

First time posting, so please bear with me, I'm hoping you can give me some advice....

We are heading to Michigan for my sister's wedding reception at the end of this month. She has a block of rooms reserved at the Residence Inn. Since we have plenty of points, we thought that we could use these to book a room. In calling the hotel, I found out that they will be under renovation during our stay, and 1/2 of the rooms in the hotel will be under construction. Because of this, the only rooms left available are in my sisters block. Marriott (both the silver cust. svc. line and the hotel directly) have told me that you cannot redeem points when you are booking through a block of rooms because the rooms are already at a discounted rate.

My problem here is when I asked if there was a way for my sister to release the room from her block to allow it to be open for the general public, and I would just book it normally then through points. They (both hotel and members rewards line) told me that because the hotel is sold out other than the block that this isn't possible, as the computers wouldn't allow it to happen. My issue is that one of the only reasons the hotel is booked is because half of the rooms are unavailable in the first place due to the construction. (I would think, if anything, they'd want to honor the points, since I don't know many people that would be jumping to stay at a hotel that was under full renovation anyway.)

We are frequent stayers at Marriott, and this has put a really sour taste in my mouth, as we have all of these points, and are not able to use them because of what they call a "computer glitch." I have spoken to the manager and the sales rep at the hotel. The manager won't even call me back after she said that she would "look into it to see what she could do." I just don't see how something so simple as redeeming points isn't possible due to "computer's not allowing us to put it in the system." Isn't there such a thing as "human override?"

Please let me know if I'm out of line here, or if I have a valid complaint, and if so, and recommendations on how to go through the proper channels to try to get someone willing to work with us, or at least try to see what they can do. I've already spoken with Member Rewards 800 number, the manager (who completely blew me off) and the sales rep who booked the block of rooms (who, did try, but was the one who said that the computer wouldn't allow it.)

If you've gotten this far, thanks so much for reading this. I've been browsing these boards before, and you all seem to be very helpful. Thanks!

try booking 1 room with points
if that goes thru
then release one of the reserved rooms (assuming you can do that without a cost penalty)
then repeat until you run out of points or they run out of rooms

but you may be stuck because of the construction
is another nearby hotel an option?

That was actually what I was planning to do, but since the hotel is booked to capacity, (except the block of rooms my sister has on hold.) I can't do that either.

There are other hotels in the area, but they aren't that great, so our options are limited (We'll be in Kalamazoo, MI). This is the only one with an outdoor pool in town, and our whole extended family with little kids will be staying here, so I thought it would be nice for our daughter to be near her cousins.

There are other places, just not as nice, and I would really hate to spend money elsewhere when we could possibly redeem points. Obviously, if we can't redeem them, then I'll just suck it up and pay the money. I just thought there might be a way to see if Marriott would be able to fix the "glitch."

if there is another, hilton - hyatt - IC, if so go coupon connection and see if you can make a trade of your points with someone else

Saying you are out of line would be a bit harsh; however, their not having award availability on a sold out hotel is IMO very understandable. Even if they were not sold out, and had a limited number of rooms for purchased stays, they would probably not have award availability.

Last minute stays using MR points for an award stay only works if there is a surplus of rooms available. I would just look at this as an opportunity to earn more points. FWIW, I have no problem redeeming awards; although I must admit I do it well in advance as many others do. I have a week award at Vail Marriott during the middle of ski season this coming year and had a week at the Whistler Residence Inn this past year. These awards are difficult to come by, but if one plans ahead (51 weeks) then usually you can get what you are looking for. Some properties, like Vail Marriott, have very limited availability. Just because a Marriott property has rooms for sale does not mean they will have rooms available for award redemption. In your case this is a last minute wedding so it is much tougher to book an award stay, particularly since the hotel is sold out.

Now if they have a room for sale, and you wish to use 50% more points then they will have a room for you. This is a very bad use of points IMO.

When looking at pay vs. using points, anything over $0.01 per point is a good value IMO. So in the case of the Kalamazoo RI, anything less than $140 per night for a 2 night stay, or less than $136 per night on a 3-night stay would be better purchased than using points for a standard award. YMMV

This exact situation happened with our wedding: Marriott ended up selling out the hotel after we had arranged out block of rooms, so people who couldn't get into our block ended up having to stay across the street at a Doubletree. The number of rooms in our block, and the rate for those rooms, was negotiated and signed into our contract. They could not have taken the rooms out of our block and sold them as award rooms. If the rest of the hotel is sold out, there truly is nothing they can do.

But my first thought before getting into any of that is: isn't the Kalamazoo Residence Inn hooking the wedding guests up with a reasonable group rate? I felt like Marriott took great care of us for our wedding: our group rate was about 10% below the lowest weekend promo rate that was commonly available at that hotel. I've stayed at several other Marriotts as part of wedding groups and paid similar rates: always a little below what I could get otherwise. (Granted, it has crossed my mind to buy the higher rate because of qualifying-night promos and Marriott points, but that's beside the point.) In other words, using points wouldn't enter my mind because the negotiated rate was attractive for that property.

The renovation is a non-issue. During the renovation, you're simply dealing with a smaller hotel. The fact that it's temporarily smaller doesn't matter: in this case, it's sold out.

My advice, assuming the wedding party has any type of reasonable rate, book one of the block rooms and enjoy the weekend with family. Your points will be available for use on another vacation.

Thanks to all of you for your responses, they have been really helpful!

aaupgrade, good point on the MR room availability, I didn't even think about those being limited. We did make the reservation back in March, when everything was still available, but didn't really look into pressing the points issue until recently (after family thought we should check again) and then it was sold out. I guess that's our fault for waiting so long!

pinniped, I'm not too sure how much the rooms are originally, I'm planning on calling later today to see how much of a deal we are getting. Right now, we are in a studio for 119/nite, and we will be there 2 nites. (It's an all-suite hotel) For Kalamazoo, Michigan, I don't know how good of a deal that is, so I guess I'll have to see what the discounts are from what the original price of the room is. Either way, you all are probably right...I'll go ahead and just pay the rate and collect the points for another stay. I guess that's a good way to justify another vacation!

Thanks again for all of your help!

I'm a Kalamazoo native, and that price is in the market range for this time of year.