Westin Yilan Playing with inventory availability
 

Hi all,

I know a few properties within the SPG family that plays around with inventory availability, but this particular hotel - Westin Yilan in Taiwan, is driving me nuts.

I'm looking to book two rooms on a 1 night stay - Satuday 8/26/17-8/27/17, 1 room on cash the other on points (10k starpoints).

If I only search for:

• Saturday 8/26-8/27, it shows there is absolutely no availability.
• Friday 8/25-8/27, multiple suites are now available.
• Thursday 8/24-8/27, now even base room (deluxe) is available on points.

So it's clear that there are rooms available and i actually managed to book a 3 nights reservation (base room) starting on Thursday - so this is not phantom availability. The hotel is obviously enforcing a minimum 2 days stay (for suites) and 3 days stay (for base rooms) on stays that include a Saturday.

My question is, is Westin Yilan allowed to do that? I went over SPG's terms and agreement and did not find anything that allows the hotel to do that. It only says, if the base room is available, then I can book it on points.

Anyone has similar experiences or any solution?

Thanks!

Any hotel is allowed to restrict availability for rooms/suites as they see fit.

This would be an issue, however, if they were selling standard rooms for paid bookings and not allowing them to be booked as awards.

Best regards,

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

[email protected]

Thanks for the quick reply William, i guess we'll look for a different hotel then.

Common in resorts. Some resorts have seven-night minimum during holidays. The same restrictions apply to paid as well as award rooms.

Yes, if base room is available for cash booking then it should be available on points. They can have the same minimum length of stay restrictions.

minimum stay can be common everywhere, primarily when high occupancy

can be a pain figuring out on web reservations

besides clarifying details/availability with hotel itself, sometimes they/sales/manager may make exceptions

for starwood, not sure if hotels ever/often take into account general starwood history/status (vs at hotel)

Hello jazzmailmam

Just a quick update on this. Hotel is fully booked on 26-Aug for 1 night. Regarding the suite availability on the dates mentioned, hotel is aware of this and is trying to rectify it as soon as possible. We tried to locate availability from 24-27 Aug but hotel is shown as fully booked. If you are still seeing this availability online please let us know. We apologize for this inconvenience and if you need further assistance you can drop us a PM or email.


Best regards,

Lin Naseem | Social Media Specialist
Starwood Customer Contact Centre (AP) Pte Ltd
[email protected]