Category Archives for Hotels.
The property is slated to leave Marriott after today. It should tell you something though about the Four Points brand that the property is being required to invest in upgrades to meet Best Western requirements.
The question is whether Marriott is making a big mistake with such a modest promotion as hotel occupancy and rates begin to fall. This was happening even before coronavirus. The argument in favor of spending very little on promotion marketing is that bonus points aren’t going to move the needle when people are scared to travel (it’s why airfares went up after 9/11, only those who absolutely had to travel were taking to the skies).
In August the CEO of Caesars declared that resort fees could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back for Las Vegas lodging. Yet just two months later Caesars raised resort fees at Caesar’s Palace, Nobu and Rio.
Now with visitor arrivals to the U.S. under pressure from coronavirus – and the entire Chinese market large cut off from travel to Las Vegas – you’d expect prices to be reduced, not raised. Yet effective March 3 Caesars is raising resort fees at Harrah’s, Flamingo, Linq and Bally’s.
As hard hit as the market is overall travel companies are bearing an especially heavy brunt from reduced demand and the expectation that things will get even worse. Airlines haven’t just cut China and Hong Kong flights. What’s most striking I think is the extent to which even domestic travel is already scaling back. Three observations.
When hotels aren’t making the award space available to members that they should I’ve had good success getting the loyalty program to intervene. I’ve had especially good success with Hilton, such as with the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem and the Waldorf Astoria Grand Wailea on Maui.
Readers reach out to me all the time with award redemption problems and I do my best to get them solved, week after week.
Following a similar move already announced by Hyatt, Marriott is extending elite status by a year for residents of China and its Special Administrative Regions (as well as Taiwan so as not to get in trouble by differentiating it) due to the coronavirus outbreak and concomitant drop in travel to and from the region. This is based on account address date as of February 1, 2020.
Marriott is also extending Suite Night Awards and Free Night awards for these customers won’t expire points in these members’ accounts until February 2021.
In December Marriott changed its terms and conditions to say that category 8 high season pricing of 100,000 points per night is no longer the highest price a hotel can get.
It turns out that prospect was all about just a single hotel: the $7000 per night North Island in the Seychelles has now joined Marriott’s Luxury Collection. The hotel is now bookable at 365,000 points per night.
Against my own interests, and without concern for angering the people I know at the programs, I’m willing to call out the good, bad and ugly to come up with a conclusion of what’s actually best.
Two Hmong men were turned away from the Super 8 hotel in Plymouth, Indiana. Then they tried the nearby Days Inn and were turned away there too. In both cases the front desk employee was afraid they might be Chinese, and therefore a coronavirus risk. They wound up sleeping in their car.
Kaopra Lor videotaped the incidents and posted them to Facebook.
Annual category changes are pushing up prices at 117 Hyatt hotels, and 100 go down. Out of these 217 properties changing category 65 are SLH hotels.
Meanwhile Hyatt is adding 48 new SLH hotels to their portfolio, introducing variable pricing for cash and price awards, and implementing new peak and off peak award pricing. All of this goes into effect March 22.
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 »
