cubuffaloes2004

I had 107 nights and didnt get the email...

Rolling Stone

Don't forget the upgrade ranking report sent to hotels each day. I'm just thankful I was a better customer than most and made the top of page 1 at most properties.

RAPC

Indeed, but the discussion in this thread is very much based around nights, but this is only one part of the ranking calculation. I am often at the upper end of a long ranking list at a some SPG member heavy properties who have been kind enough to pass on some background information about how it works for them. This is despite having a lot less nights than some guests staying at those properties.

There will always be 'better' customers, but properties don't appear to judge this on only one metric, which is what SPG are doing (rightly or wrongly in the opinion of different FTers) in this case.

trog

I find it hard to believe that a well managed cat 6 type of property will voluntarily give out free suite upgrades five days in advance to a business traveler who spends a hundred or more nights a year at a negotiated rate at some suburban cat 2 Sheraton or Four Points.

I know this program looks like a good deal to many of the 25-50 people who regularly post to this forum. However for the billions of typical leisure travelers worldwide who take a vacation or two a year and enjoy a number of shorter weekend stays things are far less clear now.

For the ones who actually care about hotel loyalty programs and don't often book on Priceline, etc., previously SPG was often the clear choice. Directing almost all stays to SPG often brought Platinum status and some real benefits. Fourth tier Plat Lite status with possibly even poorer upgrade possibilities will now have to be evaluated against other programs that may have better promotions or upgrade chances.

Of course even fourth tier Plat Lite members can now get a free coffee and donut or "buy up" to a full breakfast in lieu of amenity points so that may be hard to pass up!

The one remaining strength of SPG is the relatively favorable point redemption and cash and point rates at a lot of good hotels. Companies often announce changes that they perceive will be "good news" and then shortly afterwards follow that with a massive devaluation that they hope won't be noticed so much.

Hopefully SPG still has enough key decision makers left that previously made Starwood the best choice for a large number of travelers to prevent a large devaluation from occurring.

Dr. HFH

Exactly.

Keyser

of course they do....

Keyser

if you had 50+ nights last year then it would....challenge or no challenge....

ExitRowAisle

To put your example in proper context, the 1st Class Platinums (50+ nighers) are those that chose to come in and prepare the food and serve it. The 2nd Class Platinums (the 50- nighters) are those that volunteered to clean up afterwards. In this case, the executive (Starwood) invited all of the 1st Class Platinums to go out to eat at a fancy restaurant while the 2nd Class Platinums were occupied with cleaning up the soup kitchen. Both participated equally in the program, but only one group was unexpectedly rewarded.

ExitRowAisle
A Dissatisfied 2nd Class Starwood Platinum Member

ski1stoney

Exactly ^^^^^

AJLondon

And to put your example in context, do chefs and servers get paid the same as cleaning staff?

ski1stoney

In this case they do...they are all VOLUNTEERS

AJLondon

Hence the volunteers were THANKED on the basis of effort made. The value of the chef and servers effort was more than the cleaners efforts.

MSPeconomist

For this to be a fair analogy, the dinner bill would need to have been paid using all of bonus money pool that previously was announced to be for the purpose of rewarding all employees based on their performance according to their previously documented job descriptions, where progress toward the previously announced criteria was depicted in bar graphs that disappeared and were replaced by congratulations after an individual employee had met the stated standard.

Phasers

Thank you!

Now can anyone answer the second part of my question:

From what I understand from reading this thread, if you request the upgrade prior to 5 days out, you still choose from a list of room types, but the system does not begin checking if that room type is available until 5 days prior. Well what if the room type I selected is not available, but another type is? WIll I automatically be upgraded, or can I manually switch to that room type during the 5 day window?

BizNYC

Based on the new Suite Night benefit, it seems pretty clear that Starwood corporate does place a higher value on the member that stays 50+ nights/year than than the one that has 25+ stays. It seems logical to me that the mysterious "art and science" Starwood has historically used to determine priority among Platinums in their daily suggested upgrade list for each hotel probably already gave a higher priority to those Platinums with 50+ nights over those with fewer nights, but 25+ stays. So those 50+ nights Platinums were probably already scoring the better upgrades over the 25+ stay Platinums in 2011, even if it weren't as obvious to members as it is now with the introduction of the Suite Night benefit. So I am thinking that this new benefit probably won't mean a big difference between when a 25+ Platinum member scores the great upgrade vs. the 50+ nighter.

Where I do think the Suite Night benefit will make a bigger difference is allowing those with, say, 51 nights in exercising the award to jump ahead of those with 80 or so nights for an upgrade, where I would assume the latter would normally be higher on the upgrade list but doesn't care about being upgraded enough in that stay to use the award. That I think is a great idea.