it's a so so promo...

Q4 is a lot of travel to Sydney, HK, JP, China, India, Dubai an most of the properties are not participating :-(
Very bad that you don't even have choice of 1 property in a city...

In the other hand, probably i'm staying in a participating property for over a month to use as "homebase" so that will collect enough points..

but it's really a bad sign that the list is so long, i hope SPG understands the impact of that

Oh SPG will understand the impact of it. I have had 70 nights this year so far and was planning for another 30-40 in 2011. I will be taking those nights to another chain because the hotels in my area are not participating. I suspect many SPG customers will do something like this.

I am half doing it for pure rewards optimization and half out of spite since I do not appreciate my hotel not participating. Will speak to the manager and give her a chance to give me 2x points anyway, but I doubt she will as the hotel I am stay at is notoriously stingy.

Way to go, SPG.

Well I was all set to sing the praises of this promo until I saw the non-participating list. Very, very disappointing. When you're talking that volume, you have to question if they should really be allowed to stay in SPG.

I have stays for all of Sept and Oct in a non-participating property, and there are no other participating properties in that city either. My stays usually encompass a Thurs too, so I was set to earn some big points.

Disappointing. There's a Hyatt up the road and they've got a promo from 15th Sept which is at least valid at that particularly property - may need to move some bookings.

This promo just makes my day. It works perfectly for me! ^

With 42 nights out of only 4 stays so far, I didn't really benefit from the FRN promotion earlier this year.

I'm also happy to be on the "lucky side" of the exclusion list, but it is indeed disappointingly long.

Thanks SPG! :)

Bummer the exclusion list is so long, and sadly covers most the hotels I frequent. It really sucks when there isn't one property in the city you are going is participating. I have about 40 nights left for the year. I think I may try to re-up with Hilton in the cities where SPG doesn't have any participating hotels.
:(:(::rolleyes:

I think that the overall calculus is that if you are SPG PLT and use the SPG AMEX to pay your bill, you're looking at 9 Starpoints total per dollar spent.

Frankfurt not participating:

Have migrated next two weeks of stays to the Carlson properties in Frankfurt. There is a double points promo until Sept 15, so works out fine for me (free breakfast too)!

The same reason that McDonald's requires all franchisees to participatate, except where prohibited by law, in their annual Monopoly game piece promotion. BRAND CONSISTENCY. It allows for a happier consuming public knowing that each McDonald's is participating. No need to check some list of non-participating stores. It also increases the effectiveness of McDonald's national advertising.

It is not "SPG" who will understand but certain properties who will understand. My German and my China travel for the rest of 2011 will go to InterContinental. However, still quite a few stays left for Starwood properties

Actually, they are hotels which are doing quite well without freebies (amentities, upgrades, points, and the like). It's the places sucking wind which are forced to hand over free meals to business travellers and the like.

Might've been easier to list the participating properties! I have an upcoming 17 night stay at Four Points Curitiba in Brazil, and nothing from this promotion to show for it!

Unfortunately there is no other worthwhile game in town, so I'll have to be happy getting to Platinumn on this visit. But, my domestic stays will go to Hilton!

About a dozen people have said this. Would you seriously want to look through a list of 875 properties and parse out the 150 or so that aren't participating? Seriously?

They'll understand because they'll already be full of other customers. If they really needed the extra 5 or 6 customers they may lose, they'd participate.

If their contract required hotels to participate in all promos, there would be a lot fewer hotels flagged under Starwood.

Well said. Did anyone who formulated this promo go to b school? When you have a major promo that 150 properties won't buy into that should tell you that there is something wrong with the promo.

All the Sydney properties opted out of one of the recent quarterly promos ?was it last year's FWN promo? They clearly did not suffer such significant consumer backlash to make them change their ways.If a hotel is getting an occupancy rate upwards of 90% they would probably find it better to lose a few nights stay than give an incentive to the majority of guests who are going to stay regardless.

When their occupancy levels collapse in the next downturn the hotels will run back to the promos and the few guests who didn't stay because of lack of a promo will also likely come running back.