Property: Sofitel Darling Harbour
Status: Accor+ Gold
Room booked: 2x superior rooms
Room upgraded/type: No. but booking 2x double rooms and asking for them to be adjacent wouldn’t help.
Rate: flexible plus using points. Had to call to get family rate as it wasn’t available online for the Saturday night.
Free internet: Yes
Free Breakfast: No, but used +benefit and used an additional member for a day voucher in my wife’s name to get bigger discount.
Early check in/late out: n/a
Welcome drink: Yes x 5
Welcome gift: 2 bottles of water and a stuffed kangaroo toy.
Recommended? Very nice stay and views non-harbour are pretty good - even a bit of plane spotting. Being able to watch the DH fireworks from the pool away from the crowds was fantastic. Easy stroll to the Lyric Theatre and shops in cbd.
It gets a heck of a lot better when you become a Platinum (see
my review). When I stayed there back in February using my Accor+ free night, I was upgraded to a room with a harbour view. Oh, and got a bottle of wine, anniversary cake, and a few other goodies. Importantly, I was treated like a VIP during the stay. As a Platinum I didn't bother with the check in counter at the ground floor, I simply went up to the lounge floor and checked in there (where my partner and I were offered champagne whilst we got checked in). Lounge was great offering h'or deurves and tea in the afternoon and then again in the early evening. Breakfast was a-la carte, none of this buffet nonsense (although they did have a buffet should you be interested). Breakfast service was a little sluggish, but overall very nice:
We stayed at the Sofitel Wentworth on 13/11/24. We had an early engagement and so, when I received the email a couple of days before, I requested an early check in. We arrived at 12 noon which was the time I requested. Was told that the room was not ready and that there was no guarantee that it would have been. At 1.30pm I asked again and was told that the room wasn’t ready. I explained my timing issues and said that we would take any room. I was told that there was a room available but that it was an upgrade. I assumed that it was a platinum upgrade and so accepted it.
I
had the same problem staying 2 nights at the Wentworth during Easter, so nothing new there. It is surprising though that you told them in advance yet they still couldn't accommodate you. And look, I get it, hotels can get busy and full, sometimes it's not always possible to make that accommodation, but at a hotel like Sofitel where service is one of the key selling points, can they really not get someone checked in 90 minutes earlier than the specified check-in time, particularly if it was requested during booking?
What might make sense next time is to leave your stuff there and tell them you'll come back later to check-in. Then proceed to check-in around 8 or 9 PM. I'm a huge believer in late check-ins providing the best rooms for elites. And think about it for a moment, if you check-in at 9 PM, chances are the hotel won't be selling those suites last minute, and with everyone else settled into a room, they'll have a good idea of room inventory too. As a corollary to this theory, cheap rooms (particularly those booked last minute) beget the upgrades. The thinking here is that if you could secure a room last minute at a hotel for peanuts, demand must be low and so available inventory remains high. The more unused inventory a hotel has, the better your chances are of getting an upgrade. The only exception I can think of was when I was staying at the Hilton Durban, the hotel was oversold and they bumped me to the Presidential Suite (I didn't mind).
It was a stunning suite but I was surprised to see that I was charged an upgrade fee of $95!
Unless the agent proactively offers me the upgrade, you cannot assume it's free.
I certainly would have! Platinum is entitled to a room upgrade and early check-in. The hotel should have just done it.
Entitled is a strong word. They have access to those things if they are available, per the
Accor website:
Early check-in/late check-out (subject to availability)
Upgrade to the next room category (subject to availability)
Receive an upgrade to the next room category, if available at time of check-in. Excludes villas, one-of-a-kind suites, speciality suites and presidential suites.
If unavailable, the hotel will seek to allocate you an enhanced room in your current room category i.e. a higher floor, more desirable view, corner room or better amenities.
At Fairmont, an upgrade is not applicable to Fairmont Gold Floor.
Upgrades are available up to the Junior Suite category at Raffles hotels.
This upgrade does not apply to ibis, ibis Styles, Adagio Original, Adagio Access and Adagio Premium brands or any other hotels that do not have different room types.
So if there wasn't a room available in your category when you came in, in theory they could prevent you from checking in. Ditto for late-checkout. And I say that from experience. Some hotels I've stayed at, I've had 2 PM or even 3 PM late check out no problems. Other hotels, I'm fighting just to get an extra hour checkout since what hotel specifies a 11 AM checkout? If you want guaranteed late checkout my recommendation would be looking at chains that offer that as a benefit (and yes some do). A perfect example is Marriott. If you're a Marriott Gold elite you will get a guaranteed 4 PM late checkout across the board. I used that back in February staying at the W Sydney, I simply requested it and they updated the keycards and that was it. Zero pushback, because it's a guaranteed item.
Same thing goes with upgrades, if you want it guaranteed you need to find a hotel chain that offers that perk (I'm not aware of any that provide that). In the case of Accor the only way to get a guaranteed upgrade is by applying your suite night upgrade certificates at booking at a hotel that provides suites to upgrade into (those by the way can be incredibly valuable - I used 4 of them to upgrade to a Junior Suite at the Sofitel Melbourne, saving me $1,000 over the 4 night stay). Now as a Platinum, I have been upgraded a number of times, including ibis hotels but again it's a roll of a dice. In every instance the process was the same, I checked in and they either told me I got an upgrade or I found out when I got to the room (in one instance I
was upgraded to an Executive Suite at an ibis in Canberra).
If you want to talk about guarantees as a Platinum, there is only one that comes to my mind, Guaranteed room availability at an Accor hotel as an elite when booking 3 days in advance (as a Gold) or 2 days in advance (as a Platinum or higher). But even then there are caveats like designated days each hotel sets aside in a calendar year that are excluded from the guarantee.
Only if available, 1 category from initial booking
Technically you are absolutely correct here. That is what the terms and conditions say. In practice, however, hotels can be more generous than that. Two examples that stick out in my mind was last month staying at the Hotel Morris I was
double upgraded to a nicer room (from the cheap $110/night room I booked) and the
aforementioned upgrade to an executive suite at the ibis in Canberra.
-RooFlyer88
