Category Archives for Hotels.
After disclosing one of the biggest data breaches in history at the end of 2018, Marriott is sharing another data breach – as if just to show that bad publicity, degraded customer trust, and massive fines alone can’t put Marriott and Bonvoy on the straight and narrow
Thailand was the first country outside of China with a confirmed COVID-19 patient. It’s generally considered to have done well containing the virus, currently reporting just 1245 total cases, though I’m skeptical of testing and reporting at least outside of Bangkok.
The King of Thailand also must be skeptical, because he’s quarantined himself in Germany where there are over 56,000 cases. King Maha Vajiralongkorn has rented out the entire Grand Hotel Sonnenbichl to isolate himself “with his harem of 20 women and his servants.”
Hilton has offered status matches and fast tracks to elite for years. They’ve just extended their latest offer. Hilton will give you 90 days of Gold status which largely means free breakfast or lounge access and avoiding the bad rooms at the hotel.
Between March 11 – 22 Hotels.com “spent nearly $3 million on TV ads, with the majority on reality TV and movies.” You don’t have to be Captain Obvious to realize that’s a lower-return investment than a drive through strip club or bottled watered for pets.
Marriott has laid off several members of their Ambassador customer service team, and will no longer provided dedicated agents to their best customers until “returning to business as usual.” Instead, Marriott tells me, the remaining group of their best customer service agents will be “dedicated to Ambassador Elites.”
For the week ending March 21, U.S. hotel occupancy fell to its lowest level ever recorded. Occupancy fell by 56% and average room rates fell 30%. Group (event) occupancy was down to 1%. And occupancy rates are likely even lower right now – we’ll just have to wait about a week to learn just how low.
I’ve had several readers ask about expiring Hyatt free nights. They’re offering reservation cancellation flexibility, postponing peak season award pricing and hotel category changes and have paused expiration of points through May 31.
Like many other programs they haven’t said anything about elite status for the year yet. And they haven’t spoken to free nights – I have one myself expiring April 2. Here’s what I learned.
Hilton has come out with new accommodations for prepaid reservations, points expiration, free weekend night certificates and elite status. With customers largely not staying at hotels, Hilton is going to hang onto elites, extending everyone’s status. They’re extending the validity of everyone’s points and any credit card free weekend night certificates. And they’re extending flexible cancellation of prepaid hotel bookings by two months through the end of June.
After furloughing tens of thousands of hotel employees Marriott is set to furlough two thirds of its corporate staff both from among its 4000 employees at corporate headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland and abroad.
For the week of March 8 – 14, hotel data on occupancy and room rates is now available. In the U.S. revenue per available room was down a whopping 32.5% year-over-year. Since occupancy was ‘only’ down 24.4% by then, we can confidently state that things are worse this week, and will gett worse still.
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 »
