Category Archives for Hotels.
Hyatt is offering 90 days of Explorist status and a fast track to either keep Explorist or top tier Globalist through February 22. The best thing is that you have until November 16 to register and start the 90 day clock. As a result you can use this once your travel is starting up again.
The hotel industry met with the President today. The airline industry is asking for about $58 billion in subsidies.
What would Wag The Dog‘s Dustin Hoffman say about $58 billion? “This is nothing.” The hotel industry wants $250 billion.
Hotels that are empty don’t need so many people at the front desk or servicing rooms. Restaurants that aren’t allowed to serve guests except on a to-go basis don’t need as many servers, even if they had guests. And so Marriott has furloughed ‘tens of thousands’ of employees who will not be paid, but will continue to receive health benefits. Many hotels will also be closing.
Hyatt was first out of the gate with an offer of points for customers having to cancel non-refundable bookings. I thought that was generous because they were first and it was something. Of course this is all fast-moving, and other hotel chains have since done more.
So Hyatt has responded, well I think, and is out with a new policy allowing for cancellation of non-refundable bookings, encouraging new bookings, and offering greater flexibility for Hyatt points.
Marriott is out with a policy giving flexibility to existing reservations, offering additional flexibility on new bookings, and extending expiring points, suite upgrades, and free night certificates.
Domestic hotels already began experiencing a decline in rates and occupancy last week. Next week will be worse. Here are the details.
Hyatt was first out of the gate offering compensation to people cancelling non-refundable bookings. Hilton and IHG both have come out with even greater flexibility, and both say they’re making changes to elite status requirements.
There are ways to benefit even if you plan to keep your current stays – but should you?
Hyatt can’t just unilaterally make non-refundable bookings refundable, and they have owners to answer to. But they can give you points, show they’re doing something, and incentivize you to return to the chain once fear and risk subside.
Already we’re seeing a massive slowdown in travel. It’s scaring travel providers like United to do crazy things. Eventually they’ll need their customers when people travel again but for now United’s customers are the enemy.
How bad could things get for the travel industry? No one is certain, we’re taking stabs in the dark, but one scenario is that worldwide hotels could be down 65% in the second quarter.
Last week hotel occupancy dropped in the U.S. I expect that the effect will be greater when we get the numbers for this week. However there are a couple of interesting things already going on in the numbers.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
