You'll have to tell us about your stay at the hotel. We're going in Mar or Apr 07.

Not at all. I booked 6 nights at that Paris Champs Elysee Marriott with only 2 days notice lasy October. Great place.

Ok, I may be missing something, but I'm not seeing the dates flexible option. Could someone educate me?

thanks,
jon

When you are making a reservation, on "Step 2 of 6", which is the reservations page, if you are looking for a corporate or promotional code that wasn't available during the dates you specified, the top of the page will say something like "Unfortunately the special rate you specified isn't available right now.....". At the bottom of the page, there will be a box with some alternative actions. And one of those actions will be the "dates flexible option".

But with all of that said, I'm not really impressed with that capability. It just doesn't seem to work very well. I usually get a lot better information and can search better when I call the reservation desks directly and have them do the search.

Last minute availability for awards is not unusual. In other words, if the property sees that it has lots of empty rooms available at the last minute, it costs them nothing to make some of them available for awards. For significant long distance trips/vacations, such as from North America to Europe, most of us need to arrange our schedules and airline reservations well in advance and cannot gamble that the property will suddenly become available with 2 days notice. As reported here in numerous threads, in order to obtain award availabilty at the Marriott Paris CE property and Ren. Vendome property, it almost always requires persistent effort as soon as the property lists its reservation calendar, generally about 11 months ahead. Even then, some posters have reported not being successful. My personal experience is that if I begin 11 months ahead and if I am flexible on the dates, I am able to attain 7 night award bookings at these Paris properties some of the time.

Because of Hilton's new policy of granting golds (and diamonds) increased access to award rooms and because of Starwood's policy of last standard room/suite availablity for awards, I hope that at some point Marriott considers whether it makes sense to offer elites (or others) better access to award rooms.

FWIW, I have had no problems booking awards at some pretty good, and I would think, high demand properties:

1. 3 weeks, 2 rooms each week at the Vail Marriott Resort and Spa for January 2007. 1 of those rooms was booked a couple weeks ago.

2. All of the below were booked last week:

• 4 nights at Hong Kong JW Marriott for February, 2007
• 4 nights at Paris Champs Elysee Marriott for March, 2007
• 4 nights at London Renaissance Chancery Court for March, 2007

Now, if somebody is trying to book high demand properties a couple months out, then their success rate will probably not be very good, as there are many folks like myself that plan ahead and have already booked available awards. Also, while last minute availability does occur on occassion, in the case of traveling during peak periods that is the rare exception rather than the rule as hotels are running pretty full these days. Now if one is booking during non-peak periods, like between Thanksgiving and Christmas, then last minute availability should be excellent.

Heres's the "definitive" thread on using the flexible dates feature.

Point Usage
 

I have had very good success both in the US and abroad using points. I can only think of 1 or 2 times out of 15 or so that I did not get the dates I wanted. With a little flexibility, I even worked out those situations.

Obviously, reserving as far in advance as possible is your best choice.

But if you have trouble online, call. The reps are VERY helpful:

I think a reasonable knee-jerk reacation is that if the web blocks you out, that the entire stay is unavailable on points.

Let's say you want a 4 night stay and online says unavailable. It may because 1 night is blocked for points. A rep will check that and tell you what dates you can use or you can pay for the 1 night and use points the other 3.

That's an underpublicized and valuable feature of Marriott Rewards - and it's something neither Starwood nor Hilton will let you do. Even if the 1 paid night is sandwiched between award nights, you can still redeem the single award certificate for the total number of award nights for the stay, as long as the overall stay is contiguous.

To me it levels the playing field a little. My understanding is that Starwood and Hilton will add extra availability for their elites, where Marriott doesn't. Marriott is a little more flexible in the use of their awards, where the others are not.

But I do agree with you in that it is a very nice and helpful option.

Also, sometimes Marriott Rewards rooms come up unavailable for June 3--5 for example but available for June 3--7 ! This sometimes happens with the Hilton Flexible DAtes, also.