Category Archives for Hotels.
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.
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.
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 »
