News and notes from around the interweb:
- Earlier this month I wrote that IHG One Rewards had started allowing hotels to restrict ‘specialty’ entrees from the Diamond breakfast benefit and predicted that this was a loophole hotels would ram a truck through. I understand that they might not expect a property to serve lobster (as I’ve had at Hyatts in Boston as part of their breakfast benefit) but without any language around what’s ‘specialty’…
We’re already seeing this! One property has started charging Diamonds extra for omelets and for pancakes considering both to be ‘specialty’. Sad.
- 30% off Singapore Airlines premium economy awards New York JFK – Frankfurt
- Citi ThankYou Rewards added Accor as a transfer partner at 2:1. Meh. Capital One is also 2:1 with Accor, so 2,000 points = 1,000 points in Accor’s program where each point is worth 2 euro cents.
- Marriott is offering 40,000 bonus points for a 4+ night, $1500 minimum spendHomes & Villas bookings made through May 19, 11:59 PM for stays by September 9, 2023.
- 25% bonus from Citi ThankYou Rewards to Air France KLM Flying Blue through June 17, 2023.
- The SouthWoke trolling campaign continues.
Culture wars via Dallas billboard (or so I’m told.). Do yourself and don’t visit the URL on it pic.twitter.com/RgOP93zig3
— 🇺🇦 JonNYC 🇺🇦 (@xJonNYC) May 15, 2023
More just bigotry or intolerance than “trolling”.
ahhhh, IHG – like the story of the scorpian and the frog, its just in their nature
A year ago, IHG had the makings of being the best loyalty program besides Hyatt. Then hotels started playing games with what constituted a club lounge and now they’ve gutted the breakfast benefit. Now I’m leaning toward forgetting about IHG, except when I’m in a small town and the only option is a Holiday Inn Express.
Agreed with FNT. I’ll add that until IHG adopts mechanisms that force hotels to abide by their otherwise non-existent/minimal standards, and until they can empower their otherwise impotent customer support teams, their program will continue to be an afterthought in the loyalty space. So much potential gone to waste there.
Kool-aid drinkers believe Hyatt is “best” because it’s been declared ad nauseam as such by self-anointed “travel gurus”. So, the only reason “IHG had the makings of being the best loyalty program besides Hyatt” was because self-anointed “travel gurus” began proclaiming it as such. Before the changes had even been implemented, this site had already declared the “new” IHG One better than Hilton Honors when, in reality, the “new” IHG One was nothing more than a very bad imitation HH! Now we are seeing what the true “revamped” IHG One is like…
There is almost always what self-anointed “travel gurus” claim on side and the facts and reality on the other…
I can almost guarantee the tight-asses are the Indian owned franchises around the world…. it should not be allowed… they want all the benefits of being IHG and it’s substantial rewards member list, but the Indian tight-asses don’t want to fork out the benefits, you should name and shame them all
I can almost guarantee the tight-asses are the Indian owned franchises around the world…. it should not be allowed… they want all the benefits of being IHG and it’s substantial rewards member list, but the Indian tight-asses don’t want to fork out the benefits, you should name and shame them all