As a Starwood Gold member (just recently downgraded from Platinum), we used 30,000 points for a 1-night stay at The Chatwal. Although the hotel is a very nice property, it did not come close to our expectations for a "Category 7" hotel. We requested an upgrade a couple of weeks before our stay and informed a "front office supervisor" that we would be celebrating a special birthday. He responded promptly and said he would do his best to obtain an upgrade but could make no promises. Our reservation was for a "grand deluxe" 400-square foot room. At check-in, we were advised that we had been "upgraded" to a larger room (but not a suite) on the tenth floor. The room, in fact, was the bedroom of a suite and had a locked, adjoining door to the suite itself. It had two windows, but limited natural light and no view to speak of. One of the first things we noticed was that the occupants of the suite kept trying the adjoining door to our room (presumably assuming it belonged to their suite). This was a bit unsettling from a security standpoint. The room was luxuriously appointed but did not appear to me to measure anywhere near 400 square feet. The bathroom had 2 sinks, a heated toilet (which held no appeal to us in 90+ degree weather), a TV built into the mirror, and a rainshower tub/jacuzzi (but not very much room for toiletries). The bedroom had a sitting area, desk, and coffee table, with a good selection of interesting magazines. The major disappointment we had was that the so-called "lap pool" was not a lap pool at all. I would call it a "plunge pool" at best. The spa attendants referred to it as a "resistance pool"--it is the type of pool that would be installed in a luxury condominium unit that does not have the space for a "real" pool. I tried it out (very skeptically) as I am a devoted lap swimmer and found that I could not take more than one stroke before being pulled back to the wall of the pool. I am sure there is an art to mastering this type of pool, but it is not for real swimmers. The picture of the pool on the website makes it look much larger than it is and, when I mentioned this to the spa attendants, they laughed (good naturedly) and said they did not understand how it could have been so misrepresented. All in all, our one-night stay for an occasion that we hoped would be quite memorable was nothing special. Perhaps it was naive of me to expect the level of luxury that we had encountered in such properties as Tambo del Inka in Urubamba, Peru, the Rambagh Palace in Jaipur, the Park Hyatt Palacio Duhau in Buenos Aires, the Nadesar Palace in Varanasi, the Taj Mahal in Mumbai, and even the ITC Maurya in New Delhi and the ITC Mughal in Agra. I wish I had saved my 30,000 points for a truly seven-star property.
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