As a general observation, hotel loyalty is often easily gotten around by hotels by saying "not available" or having rooms that are only slightly better (e.g. a corner room, or bigger windows, or has a bath) as an easy means of meeting the upgrade obligation. That being said some staff are very helpful, and in some cases, I have been upgraded without asking, or been charged at an inferior room rate. As usual, staff training has a lot to do with it, especially an understanding of loyalty. I suspect IT systems also have their part to play. I think that most research shows that the average hotel guest is not driven by loyalty (given my observations, it may be easy to understand why), so you would think that any hotel operator that had any business acumen would treat a frequent guest with a lot of easy to provide "privileges" to make them return. New business is about 10 times harder to sign up. Now, to get that built into the staff culture, that's the challenge. Hotels are like airlines. Their rooms are sunk costs. Any empty room is a loss to them (as opposed to an unfulfilled revenue opportunity). Not much point sticking to rules and policies if you can get people in at no or not much additional cost, especially if they are gusts that will make filling future empty rooms easier for them. Any hotel chain reading this and wanting to permanently add me to their automatic upgrade program please take note and PM me for my contact details. I will be loyal, believe me.
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