ExpatSomchai

Sorry but being an avid SPG fan this makes me chuckle. We all look for loop holes to get cheap points, tickets, rooms whatever however when the table is turned we find out how much it hurts. Shoe on the other foot and all that.

Now before I get shot down I am not saying I agree with this policy but..............

cactuspete

This one should be a no-brainer.

pdx1M

Even if it is a no-brainer it still needs to get elevated to someone who can make that call. Then you need to figure out what the hotel is actually doing and have some interaction with them. Otherwise you get an answer here that double is required but no explanation of how to get the hotels to do that and you'll complain about that.

My experience is that the Lurkers here are very engaged, quite willing to go to bat for people, and very responsive. If you want to ridicule company reps go visit some of the other forums - like the UA one where the UA Insider these days seems to cherry pick issues to follow up on while ignoring almost all the serious ones and who despite visiting the forum more than daily may actually post once a week if that and even then generally with generic PR type answers. Be thankful that Starwood actually seems to care about real interaction here.

ajnaro

We have to keep in mind that Starwood is not really a chain of hotels. It is an intermediary between hotel users and hotel owners that through its brands gives the false impression of being a chain of hotels. Being an intermediary requires a very delicate balancing act. Starwood must please both sides, and the most powerful side is the hotel owners simply because their power base is divided between far fewer players. For this reason it would not be surprising if Starwood adopts the interpretation of T&Cs that favors the hotel owners’ side. But we will just have to wait and see.

mahasamatman

I wonder how many levels of management they'll have to go through to get approval for whatever they want to use as the new wording in the T&C.

dtremit

Particularly given that there's a six hour time difference (and thus only a 2h overlap in working hours) between Starwood HQ and the hotels being discussed.

UA-NYC

A huge +1 for this - quite the difference between the SPG and UA forums. Here, we have engaged & responsive Lurkers ^

Land-of-Miles

That sort of behaviour has consequences. Starwood is effectively a franchise company. For Franchisors to be successful they must maintain the integrity and appeal of their brand. Giving too much weight to the needs of the Franchisees over those of end customers erodes the brand and adversely impacts customer affinity. Hilton is the recent comparable obvious example of this. Hilton effectively made their loyalty scheme practically worthless (or at the very least extremely random and arbitrary) when it followed a similar path.

Without strong customer loyalty and brand affinity the Franchisor brings little to the franchise agreement.

cruiser9999

It seems that the same set of rules have been applied to C&P stays at Des Indes. There is availability for 1 person but nothing as soon as the occupancy gets changed to 2 people. Lurkers???

rooivalk

This looks very bad...... if my points end up only being able to be used for single occupancy rooms, it'll become completely worthless to me. how many people travel alone on award stays?!

Dr. HFH

Whoa, there!! We can go through all sorts of theoretical scenarios in which our points are worth less to us, including the premature end of the world. But before we spend too much time conjuring them up, let's give William a chance to get back to us. The problem may be more complicated than we, as outsiders, think. To my knowledge, he's never failed to get us an answer, though some may take longer to obtain than others. So let's try to have a little faith and patience. I'm sure that he'll let us know when he has something substantive for us.

controller1

+100

pinniped

Loopholes? For the most part, the hotel programs are more straightforward than the airlines with fewer loopholes or end-arounds to accrue large amounts of points with no effort. There's no equivalent to the airline "mileage run" to rack huge numbers of miles at low cost: the hotel "mattress run" tends to be limited to qualifying for status. On the credit card side, Amex is one brand that *won't* allowed unlimited churning: if you want to earn points that way, you need to actually use the card.

In other words, I get Starpoints either by effectively buying them from Amex or by staying in the hotels. No loopholes.

Therefore, if I felt a hotel was using a loophole in the rules to exploit me, I'd be pretty irritated. Although to be fair, I do not feel that Starwood has done this to me during my membership years, and I'm hopeful that this 1-person room situation at a few hotels will get rectified soon.

Flying Lawyer

Given that I am more familiar with other jurisdictions outside the US I cannot comprehend how you can believe that the only way I can come to that conclusion is using principles of U.S. contract law. There are several other ways to come to this conclusion and they do not have anything to do with the United States. For me, this is a matter of plain English language.

mahasamatman

The English is completely ambiguous. I believe you are letting your own personal feelings on the matter interfere. It can easily be interpreted either way.