Hyatt, IHG and Marriott hotels all offer two paths for their most frequent guests to upgrade into suites: they can be confirmed in advance a limited number of times each year, or hotels should offer them suites that are still available on arrival. (The Hilton Honors program allows hotels to upgrade members to suites but does not require it, and 44% of their brands do not have to offer upgrades at all.)
The details of suite upgrades vary, for instance Hyatt lets Globalist members confirm suites at the time of booking, and any standard suite for sale can be used for an upgrade. In contrast, Marriott only starts upgrading into suites 5 days prior to check-in, and will only allocate standard suites they do not expect to sell.
Nonetheless, some hotels play games with their inventory (such as creating a category of limited rooms eligible for upgrade) and also refuse to provide upgrades at check-in. This is especially prevalent at Marriott, though Hyatt is not immune to the practice.
The general manager of a premium Los Angeles-area chain hotel writes to me, explaining why his hotel will not offer top tier elites to suites even though the chain requires them to do so.
[O]ne thing that has begun to impact upgrades are the housekeeping ordinances that are starting to pop up in major cities like Los Angeles. Where the room attendants can now only clean 3,500 sqft in a given day, and the hotels are now required by law to offer stayover service. Costs of hskp has increased so much that operators are having to figure out how to make things more efficient, which means not providing complimentary upgrades into suites because the cost to clean has doubled. So we will only upgrade to a higher floor + view.
Since the pandemic hotels have been cutting costs, trying to take advantage of high room rates to generate outsized profits after losing money in 2020 and in many markets also in 2021.
One way they’ve tried to do this is by eliminating daily housekeeping. Where it’s required to be offered it’s often only ‘on request’ and they sometimes make it difficult to request. When housekeeping is requested, the service may be limited to just making the bed (not changing linens), emptying trash, and swapping out towels left on the floor.
Hotel housekeeper unions have fought back, since their members have fewer jobs, fewer hours, and more work to do – a room that doesn’t get cleaned daily is more work to clean after check-out. Where this general manager oversees a hotel, in Los Angeles, they’re required to offer housekeeping to guests during their stay and the amount of work they can require of housekeepers is limited. A suite isn’t just more work to clean, it takes up more of each housekeepers allotment of work. Occupied suites mean more housekeepers they have to keep on staff.
Put another way, the hotel views offering upgrades into suites they haven’t sold as expensive rather than free. And the general manager views his job as limiting costs (“making things more efficient”) even if that means “not providing complimentary upgrades into suites” despite this being an express requirement of the chain his hotel is a part of.
What next: no restaurant because cleaning a kitchen up to food and health code standards is too much? I mean, I guess we’ve seen this before when some hotels decide maintaining a pool isn’t worth the expense. Many hotels have eliminated sit-down restaurants for bar-centric restaurants that require fewer staff.
The reality is many hotels have long avoided suite upgrades by making suites only available for booking through the hotel itself. I know of several Marriotts that do this.
Damn that sq ft limit is the dumbest metric I have ever heard — I can’t believe hotel operators agreed to that or haven’t sued in court. A 500sq ft standard room does not take 100% more time than a 250sq ft standard room. It maybe takes an extra minute for a little extra vacuuming. The real effort should be based on beds and bathroom. A second beds probably adds more time than anything.
Don’t believe it one bit! Worked at hotels and I have given upgrades all the time, but it seems more want to sell those rooms. Sales managers have even been told to put them as OOO till after 5pm to increase the revenue.
1) Housekeeping on request / not daily is a guest-friendly improvement over daily housekeeping
2) Suite upgrades are meaningless, it’s just empty space I won’t use. All I’m using in a typical hotel stay is the bed, desk, bathroom and television.
The stuff the bloggers rant about just doesn’t matter to a lot of the actual travel clientele. Your preferences may differ.
Signed, a business traveler with 100+ hotel nights a year.
I opt out of daily housekeeping for two reasons:
1. I feel it’s a huge waste of energy and water to launder items I’ve only used once.
2. I sometimes react badly to cleaning chemicals and don’t want my room cleaned unless I, ya know, actually spilled something.
The notes here make me think I should leave a larger tip on the last day for what extra work I’m making for housekeeping. I really do NOT want to be walking into my room right after they use something with a powerful scent in the bathroom…usually when I check in it’s been enough time for anything they use to dissipate.
I need to chat with my husband. When on my own I *have* been tipping as if they did come in every day to clean.
As a side note, I really wish that if hotels use a common allergen, such as almond oil, in their toiletries they’d post it on the website so if somebody’s allergic they can make a request for a substitute at the time of booking or know to bring their own soap…
Blame the LA city council for the nonsense square footage based metric
https://wagesla.lacity.org/sites/g/files/wph1941/files/2022-07/Hotel%20Worker%20Protection%20Ordinance.pdf
“For hotels with 60 or more guest rooms, a hotel employer shall not require a room attendant
to perform room cleaning amounting to a total of more than 3,500 square feet of floor
space in any eight-hour workday, unless the hotel employer pays the room attendant
twice the room attendant’s regular rate of pay for each and every hour worked during
the workday.”
“A hotel shall not implement any
program or policy whereby guest rooms are not sanitized and cleaned after each and
every night that they are occupied, including a program under which guests receive a
financial incentive to not have their guest room cleaned on a daily basis. This
subsection does not prevent a hotel from continuing, modifying or establishing a
sustainable environmental program, such as a “green program,” under which guests are
encouraged to re-use linens, bath towels or similar items, nor does it require a hotel to
have any guest room cleaned when the occupant has opted-out of such service without
solicitation by the hotel or when the occupant informs the hotel that they do not wish to
be disturbed.”
@ Gary — Through this nonsesnse, hotel operators/owners will drive off their elite customers and then they won’t have any wages to pay.
Noticed this at Grand Hyatt, Athens, Greece. I went to book 9 months before a stay and hotel shows they do not honor upgrades even for Globalists. As to cleaning… much also has to do with number of occupants in the room – single business person that is gone much of the day vs. family of 4 that is on vacation.
Really good point. If I had young kids I probably *would* want daily housekeeping.
I’m on my own or with my husband and we’re both very clean guests who do our best to make as little work for housekeeping as possible. I rarely eat in my room and when I do I try to clean up after myself. It’s only polite, to me.
But if you have toddlers, they make messes.
My goal is to leave my room looking as close as possible to like nobody actually stayed there.
As a top tier member of 3 of the 4 major hotel chains, I’ve seen this play out. Hilton Atlanta, for example, where I’ve stayed 30+ nights so far this year only upgrades me to a higher floor! Bonvoy hotels generally give me an upgrade to a suite if I burn my suite night awards. However, last night at a Westin near ORD the agent politely asked if I’d like an upgrade. My response: ‘it’s only one night and I’m leaving early so it doesn’t matter that much.’ Result: gave it to me and a few other perks too. Bottomline: it’s a crap shoot!
Government ruins everything – Example #41401348290852
Very interesting. It doesn’t excuse their failing to fulfill their obligations to guests, but at least it helps to understand the malign incentives imposed by bureaucratic central planning which create a system where there is simultaneously 1) less consumer satisfaction; 2) fewer jobs for housekeepers (a group that might not easily find alternative work); and 3) wasted assets in the form of empty hotel suites. Government might have the best of intentions, but still produce harmful results.
Its been a racket loge before covid too. I’ve been a Centurion card holder for about 15 years and despite the “cache” that supposedly comes along with that card, I can count on about 1 hand the number of times I recieved a seamless upgrade upon check-in at a Marriott (worldwide). More than once I had to do my own on-the-sly investigation to discover that there were higher room categories available and then reapprach the desk/management about it. Hilton’s were a tad better about it, but I still had issues many times. Forced to be overly proactive with my request , often made to feel like a homeless beggar looking for shelter.
I always wondered why properties were so averse to upgrading loyalty members. A Manager at the Conrad in Tokyo told me once that so many people have joined loyalty programs that its become cumbersome for the properties to deal with all the upgrade requests (used to be more of an exception than a rule), he also mentioned the extra costs associated with servicing the higher room categories, espicially in bulk. So basicllay it all feels liek the secret menu at In-N-Out.
Can you drop a hint as go the hotel?
Living in the communist city of Los Angeles and State of California I can completely understand their reasoning. Trust me, my neighbor has been a GM of a major hotel here, and he’s equally frustrated he can’t provide these benefits, but the unions have him by the Ba**s!
To battle the last (of many) strikes, he literally took rooms out of service even when he didn’t want to, but by doing so he needed less full time staff and in return kept his cost down which had less impact on us.
I’m not going to debate anyone on union vs non-union, we all have our own feelings which is what makes this world. I’ll just say paying a McDonald’s worker $25/hr just raises the cost for all of us and degrades the quality of service since someone has to pay for it and it’s not going to be corporate.
To those saying they will drive away our business, in some cases that’s true, but in others it’s not due to the way corporate travel policies work. Plus for every one person they lose there will be 10 others still booking that room
Or maybe you did already and it’s a premium Marriott. Was it confidential?
Time to name names, Gary!
So the cause is an inane city rule that makes cleaners much less productive (an arbitrary square footage limit). This is a predictable result. It makes cleaners and customers worse off. This is likely widespread. The name of the hotel is irrelelevant.
Keep voting in kooks that don’t understand business. Your liberal policies at work. Everyone suffers.
The hotels should hire more folks and do the upgrades.
When you get past the cost, the cost is lost goodwill, credibility and business is worse.
I’m highest level at Marriott.
Almost never get upgraded.
And my loyalty has gone down.
And look not to eat there unless it’s a convenience of true need.
Why should I care about being loyal?
Marriott has ruined their brand with the lack of control over franchises.
We’ve had more theft in our rooms from hotel maids this year than ever before & their managers are doing nothing. Lock up your stuff & don’t leave anything laying around.
“and the hotels are now required by law to offer stayover service.”
What is “stayover service”?
There are guests that are human barnyard pigs along with their family members in a room or suite and others who are neat and clean.Some may take more labor payroll time.
With some guests you would never know they stayed in the room shy of seeing wrinkled linens and towels on the floor.
At the end of the day GMs can come up with all the random obscure excuses they want but in my decades of conversations with GMs & Rev managers all over the world primarily that are ownership selfish despite how a program is written they want them open to sell for revenue or help them recover an issue with a high revenue VIP guest.
Not a free status credit card holder enriching American Express pie in the sky status that gets devalued.
Programs can give away status all they want and make elite status illusion promises but you will always know quickly upon arrival @ a property if they are the real deal.
You can almost always point the finger @ the non compliant properties and almost always find that ownership and the general business culture are at play.
These are the same ownership folks that consider a lavish elite breakfast as a cup of yogurt and a banana.Sorry tea,coffee or water are extra 😉 Notice that temperature control on the wall that never cools or warms the room properly stuck at the same cost effective temperature ?
Its all in the same mind set.So though you may be paying a premium rate at the end of the day ownership sets the bend the guest over policy or not. They have your money and may genuinely offer a lack of hospitality and recognition or wow you.
The programs are typically a cash cows driving revenue directly to the hotels.
As a famous philosopher/blogger once said “Your mileage may vary!” 😉
Globalist at Hyatt gets the free upgrade to the suite at the moment of check in, upon availability. When they book the room, if they have a suite upgrade award they can apply it and they will have the suite guaranteed.
Reposting…this is all on the city council of LA taking the unions at face value with no compromise or common sense. The square foot metric is absurd. There are other ways to balance workload without such a clumsy cutoff.
“https://wagesla.lacity.org/sites/g/files/wph1941/files/2022-07/Hotel%20Worker%20Protection%20Ordinance.pdf”
“For hotels with 60 or more guest rooms, a hotel employer shall not require a room attendant
to perform room cleaning amounting to a total of more than 3,500 square feet of floor
space in any eight-hour workday, unless the hotel employer pays the room attendant
twice the room attendant’s regular rate of pay for each and every hour worked during
the workday.”
They also explicitly forbid offering incentives to skip housekeeping during a stay.
So, that’s in Los Angeles … how about everywhere else in the world as playing games with inventory and availability by hotel management and some egotistical FD staff is not restricted to “the communist city” of LA!
Marriott and other “Large” chains are just too big to manage. Too many rules and regulations. Marriott Corporate has taken their eye off the ball so to speak. Offering elite to every Tom, Dick and Harry yet they cannot manage the elites that were there previously. Revenue and warm bodies and it doesn’t make any difference how you get them. I’m Lifetime Titanium and can’t remember the last time I was acknowleged nor get an upgrade. Don’t come to me with a problem unless you have a solution….problems, problems, problems and NO SOLUTIONS. Actually, I don’t have a solution either as the Genie is outta the bottle.
Considering that those claims were thoroughly debunked just a few days, their being recycled as if they were established facts is of such intellectual dishonesty it’s breathtaking.
Follow the link below to see clear evidence of how Hilton Honors has automated HH Diamond complimentary room upgrades, including to suites, globally to potentially prevent individual properties from “playing games” with availability, or issues like the one described by the GM in this post.
Shown at the link below is an airline-like automated notification of my upgrade to a King Executive Harbour Suite at Conrad Hong Kong in late January 2023, sent to me on the HH app fully 3 days before I arrived at the hotel and inviting me to check in automatically into the suite.
Features of the HH new upgrades scheme are that (a) they can be confirmed up to 3 days before check-in, (b) they are unlimited, and (c) they are automated globally and prioritized (Golds < Diamonds < LT Diamonds) like airline cabin upgrades, meaning that they combine the best features of other programs' schemes, without their disadvantages.
Here's the notification message I got on the HH App:
Look at it carefully because, @Gary’s continued denial notwithstanding, that is real-life experience of how Hilton’s new global automated upgrades work in practice, subject to availability.
https://bit.ly/3DBAYAG
If you want a suite, pay for it like the rest of us. I’m sick of rich people expecting handouts.
I don’t care what the local law says.
This is a credibility issue with the hotel and is and has been a bait and switch.
“Costs of hskp has increased so much that operators are having to figure out how to make things more efficient, which means not providing complimentary upgrades into suites because the cost to clean has doubled.”
Well, assuming the manager who explained why they don’t upgrade to suites is not exaggerating about costs, first, glad the housekeeping staff is making more than the minimum wage or so they were for years and had to rely on tips left by customers to supplement their low wages.
Second, that means whenever I’m staying at hotels in California now, I don’t have to leave tips for housekeeping anymore. I was ALWAYS very generous with tips knowing the awful wages the housekeepers were being paid.
Sometimes a hotel will go the extra mile to make a Titanium Elite Lifetime member feel special. I just had a wonderful experience at the Charleston Marriott Downtown (SC). They upgraded me to the top (Penthouse) Floor so that I would have a great balcony overlooking the water; and then the icing on the cake, they comped my daily self parking, just to be extra nice !!
@peter, Hotels can’t just hire a bunch of staff to provide everyone with their bait and switch benefits as you say.
Hiring more: Do you understand how much it cost to employ someone, let alone a union employee? In Los Angeles your $300 a night room now just jumped to $450 to offset that employee.
Bait and Switch: I’ve got top tier status with more hotel, airline, and car rental companies. Have you read the little 5 point font fine print? I have and 99% of them state it’s based on availability. So like IHG will give you points if they can’t upgrade or offer breakfast, but the attorneys wrote these rules really well.
My take has always been and will continue to be, I’m entitled to what I book and anything more is a plus. Want a suite, book it, want first/business class, book it
It’s time for the FTC to step in. Non-honored rewards programs constitue false advertising.
It doesn’t matter what the cost basis is or why they don’t want to do it. They have to change the terms or honor them.
What they’re doing right now is illegal.
So sick of the whining from hotels.
Yeah, it’s hard. Somehow everyone managed upgrades, breakfast and daily housekeeping before Covid when rates were 30% lower than they are now.
I do sympathize with well-intentioned managers who who are stuck between REIT asset managers and guests. But lots of owners are just lazy. I’m amazed how many allegedly “midscale” places that still have no breakfast and closed pools.
P.S. it’s rich how some people complain about both big government AND degraded service. Guess what, the free market apparently doesn’t think you should get elite giveaways!
My $300 room from before the pandemic is already $450 now.
Prices have skyrocketed and what is received in return has declined. Significantly.
@pilotguy.
It’s interesting you have no clue who I am and think you have more status at hotels and airlines.
Maybe that why you have no clue at all.
I also know what it costs to hire, union or not.
For what we’re talking about, a hotel can and should provide what they promise, especially to their best customers.
“Only if available at check in”?
No kidding, like I didn’t know that and also understand it.
It’s that it’s available and not provided.
A tad off topic, but my issue with ”housekeeping on request” is that the request often doesn’t work. It might just have been bad luck, but roughly 60% of the times I’ve requested housekeeping the next day at Hilton and Marriott properties in the US the last year, I’ve not received any housekeeping. Very annoying.
The most surprising fact is why travelers bother with hotel loyalty programs at all. I’ve been top tier in two of them. Been a free agent since 2017. Price and location are my criteria.
The Los Angeles ordinance is going to have the effect of reducing room size in the design of new construction. Yuck!
We travel a lot—210 days this year—and are in the category of guests who are neat, tip well, and actually prefer not having to vacate our room every day for cleaning. But there is a bigger picture to observe when discussing what’s going on with staffing in the travel and hospitality industry. It’s much bigger than only lodging.
We just returned from our annual visit for a family reunion in a resort/vacation/rural area of the upper midwest. And oh, what a change from even last year! Three of the best full-service restaurants have closed and a third has switched to buffet only. A better-than-a-diner meal is now at least 10 miles away and you can’t get in because of the demand.
The reason? The restaurants can no longer find staff to work at low pay rates which used to enable the restaurants to charge prices that the locals can also afford. And the restaurants can’t make enough money during the lucrative tourist season to support themselves through the year. All of the costs of running a restaurant have gone up. Yes, the tourists can pay the higher menu prices for a few months, but the locals (large retirement population) can’t pay those prices all year long. And the tourists are only around to pay in the summer. So the restaurants fail during the winter.
Most of the available housing, including rentals, has been bought up in the last few years by people from higher-income areas looking for second vacation homes that they can also offer as short term rentals. Now the traditional local service workforce can’t find affordable places to rent long term, and are moving away to urbanized areas which have long-term rentals and the types of jobs that pay living wages. This dynamic is now affecting all local businesses and not just restaurants. As the workers migrate away, the local grocers and personal services businesses are also failing.
It’s ironic that the holiday newcomers bought their vacation homes in order to get away from the stresses of their jobs and lives in urban areas, but now they have to shop for food and cook their own meals on vacation because the restaurants they were counting on serving them are vanishing.
At the resort we were staying, they also closed the restaurant and bar due to lack of staff, but at least our suite had a kitchen and we enjoy cooking. I don’t think the moms (typically) of the families with children, who were also staying there, were delighted to find that they would have to prepare all the meals on their vacation. So maybe next year they don’t return and go on a cruise instead?
I don’t have a solution—I’m just observing the trend. A very few of you whine about the workers you think are selfish because they want more money. Yes they do which makes them just like you. The labor supply disruptions are an inconvenience, but I’m not entitled to convenience. The rest of people in the world are not my personal concierge service.
While this article is well intentioned, it’s contextually irrelevant because it’s based on the micro niche of what the LA market supposedly is and honestly, that doesn’t matter or apply to the other 99.999999% of properties in the US.
The overriding facts are this:
Like it or not, the industry as a whole is in a race to the bottom in terms of staffing, controllable costs and guest amenities/benefits and no, it’s never coming back. The staffing levels that existed at properties back in 2019 are gone the same as the staffing that existed prior to 9/11 will never come back. It’s been a 20+ year purge and all the pandemic did was give the parent companies and their franchisees the cover to speed things up.
The oldest game in the industry that has existed forever is that the parent company wants the appearance of standards, because they boost their top line and the owner/management company wants to subvert as much of those standards as possible because doing it helps their bottom line. The game is how far can you push it, and then still maintain appearances for the one time a year you have a QA audit and an actual parent company employee is on site versus the rest of the year when they have no clue what’s going on since so few people fill out post stay surveys in any form. Each side knows what the other is doing but it’s like the see no evil/hear no evil monkeys.
Labor costs are such a big issue because the franchise owner can’t control many things like franchise fees, insurance, utilities and F&B costs but you can always control labor and that’s why the parent brands push so hard for app use, F&B credits and opt in non-daily housekeeping. It’s 100% cost containment-job riffing tools, no more-no less, period.
Also don’t believe the MSM that hospitality companies are having hardships due to labor costs. Big BS on that one. Chances are the staff that got these places through the lockdowns and pandemic either burnt out and left or they got a big fat nothing while the layoffs during ’20 & ’21 were brutal. If you were lucky enough to get paid a bit more, it probably came at the expense of overall decreased staffing in that department/property/etc. so sure, you got paid, but you’re also doing a hell of a lot more work for it.
Overall it amazes me that people stay in the industry. Between the low pay, little to no benefits and irregular work schedules, why would you? You would have to be out of your mind. It’s why so many frontline employees are the way they are. You would be too if you’re wages were stuck in 2018, you’re treated by local management/the management company as disposable and the parent company is an absentee landlord to all of this because it’s not their hotel.
What this comes back to is, the industry is hell bent on cost containment. It’s not about growing your way to prosperity, it’s completely about cutting you’re way there. Almost every situation where something that is guaranteed, promised, etc. falls apart it’s usually due to something relating to a written or implied LSOP that the owner/management company has in place that knee caps things from happen the way they should.
The beauty for them is that they’re untouchable in this equation and never really fee the heat from the travelling public. If any problem ever does arise that somehow gets to them, the LSOP doesn’t change, they’ll just terminated the local staff or management and keep the revolving door spinning.
Rant Over.
@InLA You are most certainly correct, and it all has the fingerprints of exceptionally harmful government action which has banned low skilled migrant labor from the US workforce to placate the labor unions which are the biggest campaign contributors to the ruling political Party, as well as the Trumpist wing of the opposition. There are many people in Central America and Africa who would love to have a $10/hr. housekeeping job and who could improve the quality of their lives (and ours) by doing so, but that is forbidden – purportedly for their own good, but not really. Liberalizing immigration and allowing migrants to bargain for their own wages would solve a lot of these problems.
@Ella: He did. What did you think staus was if not a prepay?
There is no upgrade fairy.
Upgrades are based on the management culture of the property. I’ve been to properties where there is a huge push to upsell ocean front or swim out rooms while simultaneously saying there are no “upgrades” available. I’ve seen this at Hyatt, Hilton and Marriott resorts
@ 818Pilotguy says:
“Living in the communist city of Los Angeles and State of California …..I’m not going to debate anyone on union vs non-union, we all have our own feelings which is what makes this world.”
You don’t need to – you’ve made your “political” position clear enough for any reasonable person to question the impartiality of your judgement. No doubt your Hotel GM neighbour will feed your biased prejudices.
There is another approach – to question the facts and figures.
So, given I’m reading online that the hourly wage for hotel housekeeper is averaging USD15.50 perhaps your mate can explain exactly why he / she is whingeing so much. Can any of this anti-union, anti-LA CC, anti whatever it is Gary Leff is ranting about today on his blog has any actual validity.
Back-calculating the 3500 sq ft limitation in an 8-hour shift and applying generous room size (based on Card LA) of 350 sq ft per room, the worst case scenario for the GM is paying only for 30-40 minutes of staff time for a room (USD7.75 to USD11.60) – let’s take an average of USD9.
Now let’s assume that a suite takes twice as long, thus, let’s give the GM the benefit fo the doubt and round up to USD20.
Now the DIFFERENCE between providing a cleaned room and cleaned suite in the scenario of an upgrade is the extra cost of cleaning the suite over the room. In our back of an envelope estimate that’s now USD10.
But wait, I hear you cry, what about the on-costs – well, if the choice is to upgrade to a elite or don’t upgrade, they should already into the mix – if, not we would need to do an audit into the competence and efficiency of that GM running the hotel in question.
Remember, those rooms / suites are only available for upgrade if they haven’t been sold. If they have been sold then the staffing / operation should already be geared for that level of operation. If they haven’t been sold then we better go and check the effectiveness of the yield management process.
The next question how much benefit does that hotel accrue from being a member of the chain loyalty program. Short changing program members on their benefit has some sort of negative impact, that may be trivial or great, either way needs to be considered. Save on the cleaning of the suite but remember the cost of alienating loyal members.
Whilst your’e checking all of this with your mate, perhaps ask as well, what reimbursement the hotel accrues from providing the upgrade (which may be more depending upon the occupancy rate of the hotel – right? That is turn rewards better managed hotels (more rooms / suites sold)).
No doubt there are many other factors in play – without greater clarity and some representative figures I’m not sure anyone herein should be jumping to conclusions and pointing fingers.
That said, as a customer and elite program member, I wouldn’t be that sympathetic to benefits being denied based in the case put forward by the (anonymous) letter quoted by Gary Leff and the off-record rants by your neighbour. It would concern me if such a GM was trying to deny benefits to save apparently trivial amounts of expenditure without due regard for the safety of employees (a significant part of that ordinance) or over working their staff with attendant low standards of cleaning in their hotel accommodation.
One assumes that the competency of hotel GMs varies to a greater or lessor extent.
I’ll just say paying a McDonald’s worker $25/hr just raises the cost for all of us and degrades the quality of service since someone has to pay for it and it’s not going to be corporate.
To those saying they will drive away our business, in some cases that’s true, but in others it’s not due to the way corporate travel policies work. Plus for every one person they lose there will be 10 others still booking that room
Of course you and nearly everyone who plays the mile/point game have seen it at all the major hotel chains because they all tell you exactly the same thing: upgrades depend on availability as determined by individual properties at the sole discretion. @Gary’s claim that there are programs that “guarantee” (suite) upgrades is simply nonsensical and everyone knows that it is nonsensical. His gullibility and that of his sycophants in pushing the utterly ridiculous notion that there are programs that “guarantee” suite upgrades is quite simply tough wrap one’s head around. Here are some of my favorite posts over the years that epitomize this gullibility:
2012 — I am Sick of Arguing for Starwood Upgrades. (travelcodex)
2013 — Platinum SPG, best room upgrade: please change the language. (FlyerTalk)
2014 — Starwood Platinum Suite Upgrades: Why Does It Have To Be A Fight? (OMAAT)
2015 — Destroying Loyalty: Starwood’s Lies & Expectation Management. (gamification)
See? Even SPG never “guaranteed” suite upgrades, as the “thought leader” repeatedly claimed as far back as a decade ago, using almost exactly the same words that he used in this post to claim the same thing about existing programs!
It is very tough for properties to “confirm” suite upgrades weeks or months before of a stay when the possibility remains high that they might sell the suite for cash.That is why Hilton coming out with the policy of confirming room upgrades (including to suites) within 3 days of a stay makes perfect business: around that time, properties have a pretty good idea, based on past trends and statistical data/modeling, about whether or not that they might still be able to sell a room or a suite for cash, and will be comfortable releasing it as an upgrade if the chances of selling it seem low.
The thing is (former Rooms Controller at a major convention hotel with Marriott that’s also a Titanium Elite myself) that a lot of Elites think that they are the ONLY Elite member staying at the hotel at any given time which is SO far from the truth… especially for a major convention where there are 100 times more Ambassador, Titaniums, and Platinums than the total number of suites that I even had in inventory. What people also don’t realize is that the Suite Night Award system does things automatically, based on what the Finance department allocated to the system and what it THINKS is available however the Suite Night Award system and the actual hotel operation system actually DO NOT COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER, and the system would CONSTANTLY upgrade people to suites in advance when we actually didn’t have suites available – I had ZERO say on whether you got an upgrade or not and maintaining the hotel inventory was my actual job. You don’t know how many times I would have to send an email to a Bonvoy member letting them know that system upgraded them and we actually didn’t have it – it made my job very difficult. Not to mention people book suites (yah, they actually do) so when I was sold out of suites I was actually sold out of suites because people are paying money to book them.
Also, when I did have suites available I would be upgrading Ambassadors and Titaniums the morning of over Platinums. However again, people tend to forget that they aren’t the only ones with status and I always upgraded repeat Guests that had higher status when I had suites to upgrade folks to – though I would leave a few for the Front Desk agents to upgrade folks to. I also took room category booked into account as well and even how long you’ve been a member with status.
Also, even myself as a Titanium member, I know that the “Enhanced Room Upgrade (based on availability)” does not state at ALL that your upgrade HAS to be a suite – so yah water views with balconies (we had a limited number of rooms with balconies) and such were fair game. It really irks me when sites like this states that Marriott Elite members are guaranteed suites – it states “Based on Availability Including Select Suites” when NO WHERE does it state that you are guaranteed a suite. I can’t even count how many times I had to go out to the desk myself (and I did quite often as a Rooms Controller) to explain to someone we didn’t have a suite upgrade for someone because #1 it wasn’t guaranteed to begin with and no tier states that suites are guaranteed and #2 unfortunately I don’t have any because they were all booked or Suite Night Awards took them all and I don’t even have any for people that want to pay for them.
Fun fact for those that flaunt their status but booked third party, group rate, or a wholesale package – you know that in the terms and conditions if you book that way you aren’t eligible to earn points or miles, and you aren’t entitled to your membership tier benefits? Yah, my property never really enforced that (could you even imagine trying to explain that to someone that they can’t have lounge access because they are here with a group and booked the group rate) but yah. Thankfully at my property we didn’t enforce that even though we were mainly a convention hotel because no one knew that was in the Bonvoy terms and conditions… well, until I discovered it right before my transfer to a different department. LOL.
The more I read in your blog/newsletter, the happier I am that I don’t travel in the US, either on US airlines or stay in US hotels. And I don’t stay in US chain hotels in Europe either. Give me an independent hotel any day, and with no expectation of an upgrade.
Unite Here 11 is the hotel workers Union and it is really a major power player in the city and we are worse off for it. They even control a city council seat.
Americans want ever more government and imagine it has no cost. That’s why they are content to demand more spending from a country $31 trillion in debt. Tween they actually experience the costs it leads to resentment, whining, and scapegoating. Watch a country in steep decline due to irresponsibility. And hard luck.
Imagine, paying a housekeeper a livable wage instead of 6 dollars per room or 9 dollars per hour. A room generally costs 40 dollars per night to operate, regardless of the brand or context.