Thanks for letting us know. My apologies if you didn't get the bedding type you wanted, but guaranteed bedding does not apply to BRG claims.

Best regards,

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

[email protected]

So you are expected to match apples to apples to get a BRG claim approved, but then they can stick you into whatever room they feel like? No offence, but that's ridiculous! I'd rather you guys just say bedding is not guaranteed, period. It is what the front desk manager said this morning.

He was right when it comes to BRG claims. My apologies, but your original booking was for 2 Queen beds. My understanding is that a king bed was requested, but it is not guaranteed under a BRG claim.

Best regards,

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

[email protected]

Does that mean if a BRG claim for a King Bed room is approved, the King bed is not guaranteed because it's a BRG?

Let me try to understand this: What exactly does make a stay at a a paid rate that was adjusted to some lower amount but booked in the appropriate room- and bedding type less of a "paid reservation" than anything booked on SPG.com that was not modified on the price alone?

To be more precise, if I find a lower rate for a room with 1 King bed with view elsewhere, book that exact room-type on SPG.com and successfully claim the BRG for this, would I still have to accept the 1 single bed room without view that I avoided on purpose? That just does not sound right to me- it would make the BRG kind of pricelinesque...

Greetings - Dirk

Hi lcpteck,

Yes, you are right. Bed types are not guaranteed.

Best Regards,

Christina Zhou
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

:confused:

Hi djohannw,

Room types are guaranteed. You will receive the room with the review as approved.

Best Regards,

Christina Zhou
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

Hi travelswithmyself,

Sorry for the confusion.

I have corrected my post. It is very slow to open the website today. :(

Best Regards,

Christina Zhou
Social Media Specialist
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide

[email protected]

Thanks to the Lurkers for the confirmation.

So in conclusion, if the reservation is booked on a BRG rate, the room type is guaranteed but bed type isn't. That seems weird but I guess that's the law of the land.

So just out of curiosity - what makes these BRG-reservations less "paid" than a regular one? It is not something like IHG where the first night is free but it is just a lower price...I really do not get the reasoning behind that.

On a related note: Is all of this posted somewhere in writing were I can actually review the exclusion of rooms at a BRG rate from the bedding-type guarantee? The BRG T&Cs do not have this exclusion in there if I am not mistaken...

Greetings - Dirk

What about discounts? Does use of AAA, AARP, Government, Corporate or other promo rates invalidate the bed type guarantee?

It hasn't before. Probably not now either.

That's never been my experience. They don't take bed type into account for the BRG (because they claim that no third-party site guarantees bed type), but the room and bed type you book on spg.com are the room and bed type you should always get.

The problem here is that you must match room AND bed type in order to get a BRG claim approved. Considering these requirements, it should be reasonable to assume that you will get EXACTLY what you sought in claim submission. It's definitely left me scratching my head. :confused:

IME, i had several brg claims approved where competitive website shows 1 single bed or 2 queens but spg.com doesnt offer such bed type at time of booking. As long as room type is the same, i did not encounter any problems getting my claim denied because of bed type.

Yeah. I don't want to stray into meta. My experience has been the opposite, and I've done a lot of BRGs over the last few years.

Do Starwood guarantee bed type booked?
 

I booked a king and am currently showing a twin non upgraded room at a LC property. Is the change of bed type in line with the minimal brand standards?

Did you book with points or with cash?

Bed type booked is guaranteed with paid reservations. Bed type booked is not guaranteed with award reservations.

not necessarily true in my case. few times i reserved/paid for king, and got double, or vice versa.
but then again, i have low expectation, other than a place to crash, plus access to lounge, while doing business travel.

Lurker has explained the bed type & smoking preference guarantee with paid reservations. Take it to the bank. (That's not to say some properties won't fight...)

This is a paid reservation.

Thank you.

There is an FAQ on this subject. Here you go.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/starw...ml#post4436987

That sounds like a downgrade. Same thing happened to me at W NY, going from a King to a twin sized bed. Not acceptable.

I would ask the hotel to rectify the situation, and if they claim room type is not guaranteed, escalate to Corporate Customer Service.

Keep in mind that some properties (Park Tower which is the London LC hotel) will sometimes show a room as a twin when it is actually a King. The Kings are actually a pair of twins connected together. It isn't unique to this hotel, so it is a possibility depending on the property involved.

Pretty common in Europe.

Ah it is that property ;)

I don't know about bed preference, but if you book a room using more points for a deluxe, executive or club level, you should be guaranteed that booked room.

In my experience, a violation of bedding type is grounds for a 100% refund (though it's only happened to me once).

Funny this would come up now. Spent a couple of nights at the Westin Birmingham this weekend and my check in was delayed by about 10 minutes because a group of 7 ladies in front of me was upset because they had booked rooms with 2 beds, but the hotel only had King rooms available. I have no idea if they had paid or redeemed points, but it sounded as though this wasn't the first issue of this kind that night. I don't know what the resolution was, but didn't get the impression the hotel was ready to offer much other than, "sorry."

Side note: there was a beauty (as in hair and nails) convention in town, which made for some pretty hilarious people watching...and apparently several "lets see how many people from our salon we can fit in a hotel room" scenarios.

Sheraton ny
 

Checked in tonight at midnight as a platinum. Reserved king on paid rate. They said they only had queens or Murphy bad pull out rooms. And said they are too big and do not garentee bed type. Kosher? No? When I pushed them on it they found a king with a broken shower.

So celebrating the one year's anniversary of my question, did SPG come to a conclusion on how to answer these two questions, Lurkers? While in my personal experience this has no real meaning to me (at least over here in Europe, where I have always gotten the Bed-type I reserved), I'd be very unhappy being given a Murphy- or even a single Bed on a reservation that has been BRG'd.

Greetings - Dirk

Wrong response! Please report this to SPG so they can have the property retrained on how to manage Plat requests.

Whether you're a Platinum or not should have no bearing on a guarantee like this. If they can't meet the guarantee, the stay should be free regardless of status.

Sorry, but there won't be any response that we can offer to these two questions. Suffice to say, the answer is what it is.

Best regards,

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

[email protected]

Still accurate?
 

Is guaranteed room type still applicable for paid stays? Just checked in on a paid stay and they were unable to provide the booked bed type. (was given 2Q instead of 1K).

As it was after 1am, and I have an early morning, I didn't protest too much at the time. It's a short stay, and…

But I couldn't find anything on the SPG website or in the terms about bed type guarantee...

Thanks.

As a person who BRGs alot this came as news to me. When traveling alobe it is of no consequence to me what bed type I have but when with family I do depend on getting what I paid for, so can you or someone point me to the part in the T& c's where BRG stay are not guaranteed bed type? This will certainly exclude SPG properties from many family vacations if I cannot count on the bed type booked!

But it is good to be informed ahead of time so no suprises come!

Count me in on this one 😉. I recently had a denial of a BRG claim, related to a discussion about bed type and smoking preference. In the denial there was clearly stated that these preferences would not be guaranteed, although it was not clearly pointed out that the lack of guarantee was due to BRG rate.

Data point: denied my original bed type (1K) because I was 'upgraded' to a 2 double bed junior suite--was told there were no king bed rooms remaining.

Followed up with SPG & property after (Sheraton Commander, Cambridge MA) and was told that since I was 'upgraded', the bed type guarantee doesn't apply. This was on a paid rate.

Lurkers, could you clarify as to whether this is correct?