At the end of last year I shared the hotel observations of a reader who racked up 249 elite nights on the road, mostly with Marriott, Hyatt, and IHG hotels.

The anonymous correspondent had concluded that Hyatt is the best chain if you can stick to full service properties not owned or managed by bad actors, but they don’t have a big enough footprint and too many of their hotels in the U.S. are limited service. So he was giving Marriott more business than he wanted to – since they’re still better than the alternatives.

He expected his travel to slow down to no more than 150 nights. That didn’t happen. And he reports back after a year on the road, sleeping around a bit across different chains.

---

---

What I experienced after 287 nights in hotels in 2023

What a difference a year makes.

Last year around this time I wrote about my experience staying 249 nights at hotels, mostly within the IHG, Marriott and Hyatt portfolios.

A few things changed this year, not least the expectation that my business travel would decrease.

At the beginning of 2023 I thought 150 nights would be reachable. Even into early summer my projection of reduced travel was holding.

Then some unexpected trips happened, and I ended up surpassing my 2022 numbers. Subtracting 68 phantom nights — bonus nights that come through hotel co-branded credit cards or other promotions — I did 217 actual butt-in-bed nights across IHG, Marriott, Hyatt, and independent hotels.

The biggest change was going back to Hyatt by mid-summer after having previously ruled out the World of Hyatt program.

That’s because my experience with making IHG my second-choice behind Marriott’s Bonvoy was truly awful.

Most of my stays were at Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Kimpton properties. After all, the sheer scale of properties — especially Holiday Inn Expresses in flyover country and small-town America — make it a difficult portfolio to ignore.

While corporate has improved the One Rewards loyalty program over the past year or two and customer service is noticeably better, IHG’s overall brand standards are unquestionably lower. Likewise, the auditing of properties — IHG has more properties owned and operated by a franchisee than Marriott or Hyatt –– must have been reduced or outright eliminated based on what I experienced over 41 nights.

It was so bad that I’m only keeping platinum because the two co-branded credit cards that I hold come with automatic second-tier status and one free night apiece. I didn’t even think about using points to renew Intercontinental ambassador status.

Why?

Of those 41 nights, only the Holiday Inn Express in Gillette, Wyoming, and the Holiday Inn & Suites Denver Tech Center-Centennial in Centennial, Colorado, offered an acceptable stay. By acceptable, I mean a clean room and compliant diamond status benefits.

Every other property from Holiday Inn Expresses to Holiday Inns and Crowne Plazas to Kimptons ranged were dilapidated, filthy or cheating on the delivery of benefits. Sometimes all of the above. Worse yet, the decline in standards and even what used to be mandatory guest amenities meant something as simple as a bar of soap in guest room bathrooms was not regularly provided at many IHG properties, especially Holiday Inn Express.

Then there was the once-promising IHG breakfast benefit for diamonds.

At the Holiday Inn in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, the mini-buffet with powdered eggs had fewer options than the free-for-all-guests breakfast at your typical Holiday Inn Express. If a supposedly full-service Holiday Inn can’t deliver a meaningful breakfast, why chase a status when its major benefit ends up being useless? Meanwhile, the Kimpton Hotel Monaco in downtown Pittsburgh cheated me out of a breakfast by not opening its restaurant on weekends for breakfast. They only opened the restaurant for brunch and dinner, at least when I stayed.

After deciding to give up on IHG it was a scramble to renew top-tier World of Hyatt globalist status.

That’s because Hyatt continues to have a limited portfolio of full-service hoels within North America. While offerings have been expanded with high-end resorts and all-inclusives, there are still entire U.S. states without a Hyatt-flagged property.

Spending most of your nights at some dumpy Hyatt Place run by Aimbridge Hospitality is a truly miserable experience. Thankfully, I was able to requalify for globalist through a combination of actual nights slept and bonus nights from credit card spend, the latter of which is particularly attractive for those who want Hyatt status but can’t find a Hyatt property in a given market.

Of the other chains, Hyatt still consistently delivers upon its defined globalist benefits better than Marriott does with ambassador or IHG with diamond. But that comes with a huge caveat because not only is second-tier World of Hyatt status uncompetitive, but Hyatt customer service has noticeably declined. So much so that corporate seems increasingly powerless against rogue franchised properties.

This is concerning because Hyatt’s growth outside high-end resorts and all-inclusives seems mostly relegated to franchised Hyatt Places and Hyatt Houses. Even the customer service agent specifically assigned to a globalist is often unable to do anything. Sometimes just getting a response within 36 or 48 hours can be a challenge, especially when traveling internationally or over weekends.

The other big problem with Hyatt is the continued lack of consistent points for food-and-beverage spending at a hotel bar or restaurant.

With Bonvoy, I can get a tremendous number of points for eating or drinking at a hotel, especially if I’m entertaining a group of clients or prospective clients. By contrast, whatever I spend at Hyatt F&B outlets almost never earns me any points.

Last year I was looking for a viable alternative to Marriott. A year later I’m still more or less a Marriott guy. Of course, Marriott isn’t my first choice.

Hyatt will get more of a look moving forward, although its absence from whole markets is an issue for me.

I don’t see myself staying with IHG outside of using the two free night certificates or burning through my million points for somewhere like the Intercontinental Le Grand in Paris before my club lounge membership expires.

I will say that Marriott has actually gotten better even if it does stupid things like redefining the meaning of a night at Fairfields in Europe or eliminate feather pillows from Westins systemwide.

As an ambassador in Bonvoy, I have noticed considerable improvements in overall service from the assigned customer service agents that come with top-tier status ($23,000 in spend plus 100 nights). While largely returned to pre-pandemic standards and expectations, there are still issues at many non-corporate-managed properties with recognizing ambassador guests or fulfilling basic requests.

And yes, there are still too many Marriott properties across the whole portfolio hat continue to cheat guests out of elite status benefits. It’s just absurd that Bonvoy can’t have a breakfast benefit defined like World of Hyatt or even IHG One Rewards.

Marriott’s single-biggest problem continues to be the failure of Bonvoy to tangibly differentiate between ambassador and second-tier titanium. Heck, even third-tier platinum comes with most of the benefits of ambassador. And as View from the Wing has noted, corporate has surveyed ambassadors for years without making concrete, pro-customer changes.

But if you’re selective, there is still considerable value within the Bonvoy ecosystem. Both from a points standpoint and an overall guest experience standpoint. One of the best-overall options is the Renaissance Republique in Paris and the Marriott in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

Marriott is, for better or worse, the only option in many markets. There is no getting around that. They know that. I know that. You know that.

For 2024, the days of default booking with Marriott are over. This year, the number of nights I stayed at independent hotels hit 17. That’s a lot of missed points for someone without an American Express platinum or Chase sapphire reserve credit card.

Going forward into 2024, maybe I hit 50 nights with independent hotels or look at Best Western, which is pretty much the only small-town America alternative to a Holiday Inn Express.

Whatever I do is wholly dependent upon the nature of my work. That’s the reality of traveling mostly on other people’s money.

As a consultant, I have lost a couple of clients. I still see no proof that business travel within the United States has recovered. Major cities continue to be empty many days of the week. The ridiculous airfare inflation makes clients less likely to fly me halfway across the country for a day or two of work. Is anyone really flying to San Francisco or Chicago anymore to entertain an existing client?

Maybe my expectation last year that my number of nights at hotels in 2023 would decrease was unrealistic. But, right now, as we approach Christmas, I don’t have a single business trip scheduled for all of 2024.
So, unlike last year, I’m not making predictions.

I’ll do my best to keep World of Hyatt globalist through credit card spend. For Marriott, I’ll continue making that a priority as putting all my client-related F&B spend really helps me hit the ambassador spend threshold.

---

---

What would you do in this reader’s shoes?