We were going to focus on using my dads stash of SPG points. He had about 130,000 points which could be converted into 390,000 Marriott points if we wanted to stay in a Marriott branded hotel. At the time SPG and Marriott were still separate loyalty programs with different points currencies, but you you exchange points in one program for points in the other instantly for no fee.

I searched for both properties on the SPG and Marriott site. Many had the same problem of only accepting 2 or 3 people in a room. We had enough points for 2 rooms, but not 3 rooms.

One property that looked unique was an apartment style property that could hold all of us, though it was quite a ways out from the places in the city so that wasn’t going to work.

In our searches we kept coming back to the Marriott Park Lane hotel near Marble Arch. It allowed for 3 people in a room which wasn’t going to be great, but the rooms looked fantastic. We got thinking that maybe I could share a room with my dad and my wife could share a room with the kids. It’s not ideal, but the hotel was really nice.

I had seen several reviews of the hotel from travel bloggers and the location was great, the hotel was excellent, and they all said the lounge was excellent.

Booking and Follow Up

I ended up speculatively booking two rooms using my dad’s points since I knew I could cancel the reservations at any point with no penalty. I specified 2 people in one room and 3 in the other. I then emailed the hotel to get a better idea of if and how this could work out.

In my email I mentioned this was a family trip and a big bucket list trip for my dad (all true). I think I hit the jackpot with the person that responded. Despite the reservation being nearly 8 months in the future Perpetua was amazingly helpful trying to help us figure things out.

At first she gave us the different options that we had with with paid upgrades to bigger rooms but wanted to stay away from those because they were expensive. What she came up with was to give us a special arrangement of adjoining rooms. They were two regular rooms where part of the hallway could be cordoned off giving us a sort of poor man’s suite. We could get a couple rollaway beds and definitely make that work. It might be a little on the tight side but it would definitely work.

Second Follow Up

A few weeks later I was booking a hotel for another trip and noticed that the hotel allowed booking of different room types by using more miles rather than cash. That got me thinking about the paid options at the Marriott Park Lane and maybe there was an option for us to book rooms the same way there. I started up another thread with my new friend Perpetua to see if that was an option.

A few days after sending the email she responded that she had consulted with the hotel manager and they would allow it. While we didn’t have the points at the moment we would only need them by the time of our stay which was months away. With that she was able to assign our upgraded rooms. My dad would have “regular” room to himself and we would have a 1 bedroom suite giving us a ton of space. Based on the reviews we had read about the suite we had good reason to be excited about that.

In addition, my Dad had SPG Gold status because he spend $35,000 on the card in the year before our trip. SPG Gold matched to Marriott Gold status which at the time conveyed access to the lounge at the hotel. We could get breakfast in the mornings and appetizers throughout the day. Free breakfast!

Most times making a hotel reservation is pretty impersonal, but I’m glad I thought to reach out to the hotel via email and see if there was anything they could do to make our reservation better fit our intended stay. I was extremely lucky Perpetua went the extra mile (kilometer?) to make sure our stay was going to be perfect.

With both hotels finally booked, now it was time to figure out logistics of getting around.