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.
ou simply cannot believe anything Marriott tells you, if they answer you at all. Much frustration would be avoided if you’d just research answers to questions yourself, on blogs, instead of asking Marriott and assuming what they tell you is accurate.
Case in point: Marriott says Platinum member upgrades don’t include suites.
Maybe you’ve emailed Marriott, like I have, and gotten no response for months. Or perhaps you’ve called customer service, waited on hold, and gotten absolutely nowhere (or, in the case of one reader, been called a liar).
Now Marriott has you covered because their Le Meridien brand has launched a new campaign called “Dial 0 for Lip Service”.
Ultimately a consumer-focused website simply cannot claim that devaluations benefit program members. Marriott ‘enhanced‘ the program, perhaps, with ‘changes you’re going to like‘.
But charging members more for reward nights doesn’t improve the program.
In December I wrote about a woman suing Hilton claiming a hotel employee videotaped her in the shower and used the photos to blackmail her. I’ve written about plenty of cases of video surreptitiously hidden in hotel rooms and also inside of Airbnb accommodations.
Now there’s any case being reported of a paid subcription website where viewers could watch hotel guests being secretly taped in South Korean hotel rooms.
Last June Hyatt previewed a plan to offer confirmed early check-in and late check-out at Hyatt Place hotels. This was supposed to launch in ‘early 2019’.
Oddly Hyatt hasn’t announced it as far as I’m aware, but it does seem to be live.
Hilton is going to give your used bar of soap to someone else in the form of ‘recycled’ soap for charity.
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.
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 »
