Update: Starwood now says this was a mistake and is being fixed.
Jason L. emails yesterday asking for my comment on a brewing storm over at Starwood Preferred Guest over two hotels in the Netherlands (Pulitzer in Amsterdam and Hotel Des Indes, The Hague) that offered free award nights in rooms for two people up until December but that now offer free night awards only In small single occupancy rooms.
Both hotels allow spending additional Starpoints to obtain the two person rooms that they used to offer at the standard price.
You know how they say, it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup?
The issue of these hotels is relatively minor. But Starwood appears to be going through backflips to make excuses for the properties, explaining away a conflict with their own terms and conditions instead of saying that the hotels are wrong on the ‘letter of the law’ but are right on its spirit, and so they’re going to amend their terms. That would have been, I think, the end of the story. Instead…
Starwood’s terms and conditions always seemed clear to me that free night awards were for up to 2 people (that if you wanted more than that in the room, it wasn’t guaranteed).
Here’s what the terms say:
3.2 Rooms at SPG Participating Hotels. An SPG Member may redeem Starpoints for single or double occupancy rooms at SPG Participating Hotels including, without limitation, for Free Night Awards.
Here it’s the choice of the member to redeem for 1 or 2 people in a room (“An SPG Member may..”). And it seems clear that this is in the terms to prevent someone from reasonably expecting a family of four to fit in a redemption room, and many hotels around the world charge extra for additional guests after two so a free night award wouldn’t exempt from such charges.
But Starwood now says, apparently that the terms allow redemption for one or two people, so these hotels are following the program terms by allowing redemption for one. That is a tortured reading of their own terms and conditions, at best. (And in fact when Starwood’s representative quote terms and conditions to that effect at Flyertalk.com, they were quoting from a marketing document and not from the program rules.)
What seems to be going on is that at a handful of hotels, the base/entry-level room really does allow occupancy only by one person. And the intent of the program is to allow redemption nights for the base or entry level room. So the program feels the hotels are complying with their rules (there’s a truthiness to it) regardless of whether they are complying with the rules as written.
There’s not any reason, though, that these hotels cannot offer double occupancy rooms for award nights. They did just that as recently as December. They could offer both the single and double occupancy room types for redemption, as they have in the past. This would accommodate members, and comply with Starwood’s terms. The fact that they’ve done it demonstrates that it’s possible for them to do.
As it stands now, at least, members can redeem a modest 1500 extra points to get a room suitable for two people.
My concern though isn’t about the redemptions at a handful of European hotels, but about what SPG’s torturing the terms of its program this way to accommodate those hotels does for the future.
There are other hotels that have ‘less than standard’ rooms on property, that aren’t suitable for double occupancy, and they offer a better room category than that for points awards. Reading the terms this way they won’t have to anymore.
Starwood is generally better than any other chain at actually enforcing its terms on participating hotels, with financial penalties for non-compliance, and actually compensating members when hotels don’t live up to standards. They give up the ability to enforce their terms and protect their members when they start to gut those terms in this way.
A better strategy, if Starwood really wants to allow these hotels to offer only single occupancy rooms as awards now (in a clear departure from 2013), would be to amend the terms and conditions to make exceptions for these individual hotels.
In other words, don’t decide that the member’s ability to redeem for a single or double occupancy room is satisfied by only letting them redeem for a single room.
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Unfortunately, this is just another customer unfriendly incident that has popped up recently that is related to Starwood (others have been the now infamous (on FT) partial closing of the Sheraton Maui pool to accommodate a religious group, and properties canceling confirmed reservations made for peak periods). This is not surprising– the economy is doing well, and occupancy and RevPar has been up across the board for hotels. In such an economic climate it could be argued that Starwood’s most important customers are not hotel guests, but rather, property owners.
Spot on comments, Gary.
I was waiting for Starwood to “do the right thing” and it’s not looking good.
It seems like properties are often up to shenanigans with award availability. I recently searched for a 5 night award at a property in San Diego. The website showed none for that length of stay. (Or at least said to call in) I did call in and they confirmed the base room type couldn’t be booked for 5 nights. I then decided to search individual nights and lo and behold each night was available. The room descriptions were identical. I booked and called in to combine and get my 5th night free. The agent did this though had some difficulty combining them mentioning that one was a different type, even though they displayed as identical. I then searched other dates and the same thing happened. I suspect that this might be intentional since the vast majority of users will not go the extra mile to find availability like I did and instead just book another property…
I recently attempted to book the Pulitzer for 2 people and ran into this issue. Aside from the principle of and slippery slope of the issue, I agree that 1500 points is rather modest. However, as this is no longer a standard room per the program, it does not qualify for many promotions, such as the 25/35% off a redemption for Gold/Plat member renewal. At the very least, as a matter of goodwill, Starwood should honor their promotions for up to a standard double occupancy room (in this case, I consider the Pulitzer’s Deluxe King to be the “standard” (lowest) level double occupancy room).
From where to you infer the “intent” of the program is to allow only the very lowest level of room, even if that room level only allows single occupancy? The terms clearly imply that the intent is to allow double occupancy.
Perhaps the problem is that the contract with the program members (allowing single or double occupancy redemptions) is written in a way that’s incompatible with the contract between the program and the hotel itself, which may speak only about “lowest level accommodation” or some such?
Pretty disappointing especially from Starwood and from their reps on FT (who are usually pretty above-board – though I understand they still have to tow the company line)…I’d expect shadiness like this from Wyndham or something.
What really takes the cake is the claim that this is essentially just how that hotel has always been and they can’t help it. The fact that folks have booked double rooms at the standard rate, as recently as December apparently, makes Starwood’s stance particularly hard to swallow.
Anymore I’ve about had it with the hotel programs in general.
Starwood needs to remember that affected guests are also their paying customers at other times and can make choices on which hotel chains to use. Starwood should not allow individual hotels to twist the intent of their program. I am at a Starwood hotel right now on a paid stay and am concerned that next time I book a points stay I could receive a substandard experience.
Starwood hotels are too expensive, whether in $ or points, to use points for award stays. 20K points is 25K miles in nearly any airline program of you choice. I’m not about to waste that number of miles for a “free” room, especially since Starwood is making it clear they really don’t want me staying with them on points anymore.
I just stayed at the Hotel Europa and Regina in Venice. I booked two nights for two people in a classic room. I used the 35% off plat gift… Anyway, for some reason a standard room was not available on Saturday night (granted it was the same classic room both nights). Not only did I have to shell out another 2,500 spg poibtz , but I lost 7,000 points because I couldn’t use the 35% off coupon. I’ve been a long time spg platinum member and I’m seriously considering leaving spg for Hyatt or Marriott over this issue. I’ve never seen anything like this or such a lack of customer service beforem. I’ve been loyal to SPG because they have always been transparent and fair. However, I no longer trust them.
the points game is dead, all is left is for chase, AMEX, and cit to finally admit it that they cannot control the pts currency anymore and to stop scamming their customers with these false offers or free flights, hotel rooms or vacations. If they want our business they are better off just offering up some cash because sooner or later the average high income american customer is gonna figure out that the points they have are worthless…whatever airline, hotel or credit card company they belong to.
If SPG ends up condoning this, it will be like the Hilton “no/few standard rooms” scam all over again. Very disappointing from a program that has generally been more direct & fair with its loyalty program members.
While I think this is less than customer friendly on SPG’s part, I have to vigorously disagree with your allegation that this is a “tortured” reading of the terms.
From Webster’s:
“or” — used as a function word to indicate an alternative
Thus, when SPG says you can redeem a single or a double occupancy room, that’s precisely what you’re entitled to do. There are single occupancy rooms open, and those are being offered. You want the terms to say “and” (and so do I, no question about it), but they do not say “and” — they say “or”. Inasmuch as SPG offers one of the two alternatives they are clearly within the terms.
If you can demonstrate how “or” actually means “and” as used in the terms I’d be impressed.
This is terrible news, I cannot believe SPG is allowing this to happen. I stayed a the Pulitzer a number of times and having two beds option was always allowed. This is an unacceptable change, I really wish SPG would overturn this policy.
Has anyone tried calling and see how much more the rate would be?
@PedroNY
Sounds like its 1500 according to Gary.
From the article: “As it stands now, at least, members can redeem a modest 1500 extra points to get a room suitable for two people.”