Category Archives for Hotels.
Starwood Preferred Guest eliminated elite status matches in March 2011 and replaced them with ‘status challenges’.
Status challenges let you earn status more quickly — fewer nights in a compressed period of time — though in Starwood’s case they don’t advance you the status while you’re working on the challenge.
Hilton wants guests to stay with the program and have spent a lot of time making small points balances useful. And this month they’re introducing a suite of new American Express credit cards with really strong benefits.
However today they’re announcing improvements for elite members — how they earn points, earn status, and gift status as well.
Hyatt’s six week promotion at the end of 2017 also brought with it two promotions for Exhale spas both still valid through February 28.
But there were no bonus points offered and I recommended waiting until that changed since it’s clear there would be a loyalty program component to their spa investments. The first bonus offer is here.
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.
While the Waldorf=Astoria Boca Raton Resort and Club isn’t really my personal style (I’ve never been a big fan of The Breakers, either) it certainly receives its share of plaudits and pulls high room rates in-season.
Since the YouTube video went up last night over 650 one star reviews of this property have been posted to Yelp. It’s overall Yelp rating has dropped down to 1.5 stars.
A year ago the Hilton San Francisco Union Square double charged guests checking out on a single day. A few days later they corrected the problem by double-refunding guest credit cards. So those guests weren’t charged for their stay.
These two countervailing errors, generating four credit card transactions, sat for a year. Then a full year later Hilton charged everyone’s cards again.
Bangkok is city where it’s difficult for me to pick hotels. Most everything is above average. Even the Holiday Inn Bangkok, at Gaysorn Plaza, is attached to the Intercontinental and practically the same hotel.
On the other hand there are very few properties that are so good they’re clearly better than all the others. It’s not a city where I stick to Hyatt, either, because while the Grand Hyatt Erawan is fine I don’t find it special.
The St. Regis was priced extremely reasonably for my dates and although the hotel is known for being great with suite upgrades, I decided not to just chance it or use a Suite Night Award but to pay for the suite. Long odds, as reported by others, but I hoped for a further upgrade.
Again via Free Frequent Flyer Miles, Chase now has its offer of 20,000 points for signing up for a Marriott Visa (a href=”http://www.firstusa.com/cgi-bin/webcgi/webserve.cgi?pdn=marriott_s20k&page=cont&mkid=65DF” target=_blank>personal and/or small business cards).Free the first year, the personal card comes with Marriott Silver status, and yes you can obtain both cards and even churn them.
In April 2005 I posted that the offer to Citibank Chairmans Card holders of complimentary Hilton Gold status was accessible by anyone. Some folks kept the status after signing up. Others had Hilton take it away. Some had Hilton say they were taking it away, but the status remained… The Fatwallet discussion of this deal suggests that it still works (by phone only, no longer online). Naturally, your mileage may vary.
Starwood’s significant devaluation got plenty of attention, but Marriott quietly made significant adjustments to its own hotel categories to much less fanfare. It’s been discovered, and is being discussed on Flyertalk. The summary:Changes in MR redemption were effective March 2, 2007. 14 hotels went down one category level, 535 went up one category level. And one member’s calculation of the impact of the change:Some quick calculations….approximately 20% of Marriott Rewards properties were impacted and the change is reported to be a 1 category increase. On a 1 night stay, that is an increase of about 33% across the categories. So it appears to be an overall devaluation of about 6-7% (33% x 20%). I can live with this as it is in-line with overall inflation in hotel room rates, unlike the ridiculous almost 20% devaluation…
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 »
