"I wanted a higher room floor at a Seattle area hotel. I requested it at the front desk when checking in. The front desk thanked me for being a platinum member and told me that the hotel is fully booked and no “upgrades” to a higher floor for me. The girl behind me checked in and she was thanked for being gold, and they gave her a free upgrade to a suite and let her choose which room she wanted! I asked about the upgrade and they told me it’s random. I spoke to the manager and the manager said lots of rooms available and she gave me 5 rooms to choose from. 🤷🏻‍♂️ In the end, I got my upgrade. Had to fight for it."

"I work for the front desk, at a Marriott, & have for the last 8 years .... So when it comes to room upgrades; it goes based on AVAILABILITY... sometimes no matter the tier, if we have it available - I will upgrade the guest. Now of course, higher tiered members get dibs on the upgrades first but after we go through the higher tiered members, Ambassador, Titanium, Platinum - then we go through the other ones. I cannot express this enough : BEING NICE & POLITE AT THE DESK GOES A LONG WA"

"I mean, it depends on the size of the hotel. Having one person on night shift for a Fairfield isn’t uncommon. The better hotels have more people working at front desk even at night simply due to the size and brand. I’d however say though, if the property has been notified of the guest’s check in time in advance, and part of deal of getting into night shift is to check people in at unusual hours like that, then it certainly does not sound right to me that the front desk agent cannot have the meal earlier or later out of that many hours of the shift."