Category Archives for Hotels.
Marriott has an award chart with each hotel assigned a category from 1 to 8. That determines the price you’ll pay in points for a standard room, as long as that room is available.
Every year Marriott re-categorizes hotels, moving them up or down, largely based on whether the rates are expected higher or lower than the previous year. There’s some wiggle room for adjustment, but changes largely track the hotel market. Here’s what’s happening March 4, 2020.
Marriott doesn’t have blackout dates. Award redemption is permitted on all dates. However hotels are allowed to have significant capacity controls for a handful of dates each year. Marriott is increasing the number of hotels that are allowed to limit award redemption at their busiest times.
Marriott made a change to its terms and conditions and it’s no longer only Marriott brands that can declare high demand dates where award redemption is limited. These redemption controls are now available in 2020 to all hotels within Marriott, including ex-Starwood properties.
At the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani in Waikiki the $33 per night resort fee includes a keiki (child) gift upon request.
It turns out the gift is a book“Dinosaurs Divorce, a Guide for Changing Families.” That’s right, the resort fee includes a ‘surprise’ gift intended to let children know their parents are breaking up. Hawaii used to be a romantic destination, but resort fees at the Princess Kaiulani turn it into something far darker.
I suggested in December that they’d kill the benefit entirely and then days later a memo leaked that it would end December 31, 2019.
There are two lingering issues, however. Marriott never told members about the change, and they made the change retroactive.
Atari is planning to build a video game hotel in Phoenix. Construction is set to begin mid-year.
If all goes well there are plans to expand hotel locations to Austin, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Jose, and Seattle. That would give Atari a chain of 8 properties offering “retro favorites as well as modern touches.”
A year ago Wyndham doubled the points price of their best hotels abandoning flat 15,000 points per night pricing across all properties and moving to three redemption tiers: 7500; 15,000; and 30,000 points per night.
At the time they shared that hotels would be recategorized annually though they did’t anticipate significant shift. A year has passed and on February 11 they’ll be making annual category changes.
One person staying on property reported spending hours on the phone with Marriott “trying to get the..chain to help.” The chain directed people to go into the office and get staff to find them somewhere else to stay. These were the employees who had just lost their jobs, and who abandoned the property early. Great strategy.
Marriott also reportedly stated “they were under no legal obligation to help” although eventually helped guests transfer to another Residence Inn.
Moxy is Marriott’s brand ‘for millennials’ featuring tiny rooms that lack actual desks, meant to drive guests to escape claustrophobia into a property’s ‘social spaces’ where they’ll spend money on food and beverage. What they lack in square footage they attempt to make up for in vibe.
One way that the Moxy Denver Cherry Creek is going about this is promoting a ‘Netflix and Chill’ rate.
I was staying at my most frequent Hyatt hotel recently. I arrived at the property around 3:40 p.m. Their standard check-in time is 3:00 p.m., which is published on confirmation e-mails.
The front desk let me know that my assigned room wasn’t ready yet.
Meat Loaf is suing the Hyatt Regency DFW airport, saying he hasn’t been able to perform since he broke his collarbone there – and had to spend 42 days in the hospital.
He was willing to do anything for love – but it turns out when he said except for ‘that’ he meant suffering personal injury.
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 »
