Quote Originally Posted by anonamoose View Post
Solid advice and I'm going to try some of this out, but I won't be able to call the hotel directly since it's in Hong Kong. They do have a 1-800 number corporate hotline, I don't know if I can shoot my angles that way as well or not but I do know their corporate HQ is in Hong Kong.

Also, the paid reservation is tied in with the with point redemption system which you can only do online on the members website. So both the free part of the stay and the paid part are included in the reservation, and this was the only way to do this on the member's website because otherwise reservations are done via their standard website.

When it came to room selection time the only options were best available rate (the 3050 HKD rate), best available rate + breakfast, best available rate + business package. There were no other selections available. Since I already have free breakfast, vip lounge, suit pressings, and so on with my status. Picking anything above best available rate is just paying for something I already get for free. I suppose I could ask to cancel the paid part of the reservation and book through their website, but that seems like it's going to take a lot of hoops to jump through at this point.
Don't bother with the corporate hotline. That is what you use for service complaints (if you actually stay at the hotel, something is screwed up, and they won't make it right), but not for complaints about rates or asking for favors. What you want is totally on the local property level.

With all of my Jew complaining, I've only once called a corporate line about a hotel, and that was where my then-girlfriend was outright cheated at the spa (they overbilled), and the property refused to correct it. But that's a textbook reason to call the corporate number. Yours isn't.

BTW "Best Available Rate" does NOT mean you're getting the very best possible deal. It means that you're getting the lowest STANDARD (rack) rate available at the time of booking. It also does not mean that your rate will be adjusted if it goes down as time passes. You need to keep track of that and do it yourself.

At hotels, you are really best served at the local property level for just about everything, except in cases where you are cheated (or have a bad service experience) and the property won't make it right. The local property has a lot of power over things, whereas the main reservation number is staffed with powerless call-center types, and the corporate people don't get involved with consumer issues unless they are valid complaints.