Often time, for hotel elite status members, we usually would email or request a suite upgrade at the time of checking. Our fate of upgrading to a better room or a suite depends on the front office staff. A charming personality and attire could help you score a better upgrade, but for people like me, who only wear 5 dollar t-shirt, the chances are often slim.
Usually, If I want a suite upgrade, I would pull out my phone before I arrive the property, and see if they still have any on sale for the day of check-in. And in the event of my attire failed to get me the upgrade, I would just ask them why do they still have a suite for sale for that day. It worked almost 100% of the time, but I do not feel that I am a decent individual for begging a suite upgrade, as most of my hotels are at an incredibly cheap rate, thanks to BRGs.
For my stay at Marriott Shenzhen Nanshan, a fantastic property (probably the BEST Marriott property ACROSS THE WORLD) located in Shenzhen, Guangdong, next to Hong Kong, I had to make the reservation through the phone. It is because I wanted to use my Chase Marriott Visa Card’s annual certificate for this stay, but I have canceled a previous booking reserved with this cert, and it does not show in my account yet. (It takes time for re-depositing).
So I called Marriott reservation for help, and the agent was able to see my unused cert and applied it towards to my new reservation.
To my surprise, after the reservation was made, the agent asked me: “Is there anything else you need me to do about this reservation?”
I replied with a joking tone, “is it possible to request a suite upgrade?”
The agent said, “Sure, let me put that request in your reservation.”
Then I was like, “Can you be able to do this?”
The agent said, “ Yes, we can!” with pride.
So for me, I guess I will start to call to make my future reservations with Marriott if I want to improve the chance of scoring a suite upgrade.
As the results, I got the upgrade to an executive suite upon check-in. Some photos follow:
