Starwood Lurker IV

Effective January 15, 2015, Starwood will implement a change to our room cancellation policy, which will be implemented at all Starwood hotels globally that currently offers a same-day-cancellation policy. After this change takes effect, guests must cancel a reservation as of 6:00 pm local time the day before arrival. This change will impact about 35% of our hotels, which currently allow for same day cancellation without penalty. The majority of Starwood hotels already have a cancellation policy of at least one day prior to arrival or greater.

The minimum room cancellation policy will apply to all new reservations made after January 15, 2015.

Starwood will be honoring any negotiated contractual rates. Reservations made under contracts will be governed by their negotiated terms.

If you have any questions about this change, please reach out to us.

Best regards,

Christopher Carman
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

tattikat2

So what is the penalty amount $ ?

Thanks for the heads up!

Starwood Lurker

As usual, that will be determined by the individual property and cited in the rate terms at the time of booking and in confirmation emails.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

pewpew

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (BB10; Touch) AppleWebKit/537.35+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.2.1.3442 Mobile Safari/537.35+)

Boo. Not a fan.

TerryK

Bummer! Too many FTers gaming the system. Quite a few threads of booking multiple hotels in the same city and see which one provides the best upgrade on date of check in.

xooz

Backwash from the recent Hilton announcement of the exact same policy.

margarita girl

I would like to see airport hotels exempted from this policy. That's the only time I think I ever cancel day of, and it's usually due to circumstances out of my control.

Multiple bookings to see who gives the best upgrade? That is lame.

remymartin

Terrible stuff. Thanks for improving the BRG percentage, but I'd rather have the cancellation policy.

Sadly, there is no improvement, as "all Starwood hotels globally that currently offers a same-day-cancellation policy" means properties which require even 1 week's* notice beforehand won't have to adhere to this new policy.

* a rarity

UA-NYC

And Marriott

scubadu

And likely all the rest of the chains soon enough.

The hotel industry will likely start heading down the airline path; hotel executives have clearly seen the type of revenue that airlines generate via fees (change fees being one example) no matter how much FTer's or the public complain/dislike them.

Anyone that didn't see this coming from a mile away has had their head in the sand. I'm actually surprised it took this long...

Regards

DC777Fan

Given that Starwood seems to allow the hotel to choose to be quite punitive on "refundable" rates if they want (sometimes requiring cancellation more than a month in advance), allowing hotels to be flexible too would be an easy customer friendly policy that doesn't even require the participation of hotels that don't want to...

TravelinSperry

I'm not a fan either - but all things considered this isn't the worst. 24 hours prior to arrival isn't a horrible cancel policy and I've also found that my status has enabled me to get the cancel policy waived in unique cases (where an emergency caused me not to be able to show). I can't say how stringent the hotel will be going forward (as this policy seems mandated from *wood rather than by hotel). In the past when I had an emergency, they called the specific hotel and in certain cases the hotel waived the cancellation policy and did not charge me.

Lurkers - will this new policy preclude individual hotels from waiving the fees on a case by case basis within the 24 hr timeframe?

Starwood Lurker

I seriously doubt that anything will change in that regard.

Best regards,

William R. Sanders
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

whimike

But the airline path allows cancellation up to just before the flight time, and often after the flight time, on refundable tickets.

BigBopper

Occupation is high. They'll try to get whatever they can because if you don't fill the room, someone else will.

Wonder how long it'll last during a recession?


And correct me if I'm wrong but isn't there a legal challenge to the Marriott policy?