Category Archives for Hotels.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
IHG Rewards Club – the loyalty program for Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and related brands — is offering a bonus up to 100% on purchased points through March 22. This applies to purchases of 7000 or more points.
What’s even better is that IHG recently dropped the regular price of points to a penny apiece, so with a 100% bonus you’re buying points for $0.005 each. They’ve also increased the number of points you can buy in a year to 100,000.
As tough a criteria as Ambassador is — 100 nights isn’t enough, and indeed you could spend 250 nights at mid-level properties in Asia without spending enough to qualify — it isn’t actually the top tier in Marriott’s program. That’s because there’s an unpublished level called Cobalt.
When a property wants to split the savings for skipping housekeeping with you rebating points that’s fair. Starwood was known for their Make a Green Choice program offering 500 Starpoints per night you skipped housekeeping. Marriott still offers a similar, albeit less rewarding, program.
Hyatt is now testing 250 points for skipping housekeeping.
Starwood customers simply aren’t used to Marriott customer service, and they think what they’re experiencing is something wrong with the program. Marriott, for its part, doesn’t see as much wrong as customers do because they are delivering normal service.
When you have a frustrating interaction dealing with Marriott over a simple matter you may think you’re getting Bonvoyed when really you’re just dealing with Marriott.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Th egregious award cancellation rules at the St. Regis Aspen — $1000 per night plus tax if your flight cancels and you show up late — deserves as much attention and ridicule as possible.
Hyatt has started offering different benefits or state levels every 10 nights stayed instead of attaching benefits to qualifying for elite status.
Club lounge access awards are given after 20 and 30 nights stayed to all members. That means top tier Globalists earn them even though club lounge access is a benefit of Globalist status.
North Island, one of the world’s top private island resorts in the Seychelles, announced it was joining Marriott’s The Luxury Collection. There are only 11 rooms (starting at 5000 square feet) and rates can hover above $7000 a night.
I’ve just learned that the property will participate in Marriott Bonvoy.
arriott is no worse than it used to be, except for IT issues that seem to be gradually getting sorted but remain frustrating. Starwood properties are mostly the same, although with lower points redemption prices at the best properties come more restrictions on availability.
Eventually we should see improvements in Marriott availability, compared to what we have seen in the past, starting next year with fewer ‘high demand dates’ at some hotels. Perhaps Flueck’s commitment that we’ll reach the Starwood model of availability for legacy Marriott will come to pass in the future as well.
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 »
