Hotels

Category Archives for Hotels.

Free Top Tier Elite Status With 33 Hotel Brands Through December 2019

by Gary Leff

discovery black promo
Oct 30 2018

GHA Discovery is the loyalty program for Omni hotels, Rydges, Alila (part of Two Roads Hospitality, which is being acquired by Hyatt), Kempinski, Anantara, Pan Pacific and more — 33 brands in total.

Discovery is an experiences program, not an earn and burn program. It’s all about status and recognition. Right now their top tier of elite status — Black — is available free on a trial basis. The offer may be restricted to cardholders in Middle East and Asia Pacific but I’ve already gotten 5000 American AAdvantage miles just by bouncing around and getting transferred a bit asking.

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Marriott CEO: Your Frustrations are Just “Noise Around the Edges”

by Gary Leff

trump
Oct 27 2018

When Marriott acquired Starwood, Marriott Rewards leadership expected to adopt Starwood’s SPG IT platform. They weren’t happy with what Marriott had and were looking into new solutions. Why not just take Starwood’s, after all SPG was viewed as the better loyalty program?

Once they got into things they learned the limitations of the Starwood system. The transition from Starwood to Marriott didn’t go smoothly however.

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Hilton Honors is Moving to a New Database, Be Prepared for Outage

by Gary Leff

toiletries
Oct 26 2018

Earlier today Hilton shared that they are updating the CRM platform they use to run the Honors loyalty program. They’re going to take systems offline October 30 and into October 31 (“depending on your time zone”). This surprises me, loyalty programs almost always make these transitions over a weekend.

Hilton assures that “existing reservations will not be impacted.” Let’s hope everything goes as quickly as Honors expects. But get all of your Hilton business done before October 30 and assume it could take longer than a day before you have access to your account back.

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Wyndham Expected to Double Award Price of Best Properties

by Gary Leff

wydham on beach
Oct 26 2018

Five years ago most Wyndham properties could be booked for a maximum of 16,000 points. They jacked up award prices to as much as 40,000 points (after pricing some properties as high as 45,000 and 50,000 points).

And then they introduced a new flat redemption rate of 15,000 points per night in 2015. This was hailed as a big decrease in pricing for their best properties, when really is was reverting to what pricing had been just two years earlier — and a big increase in prices for lower-end hotels.

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12% Rebate on Marriott Reservations, Book Quickly

by Gary Leff

outside marriott hotel
Oct 22 2018

Historically the payout was less than 2%, so this is an amazing deal that probably won’t last. It’s worth it to make any Marriott (including Starwood) bookings through the site, and to make as many as you may need quickly. Indeed, making cancellable bookings that you may need can make good sense.

Since you’re sent from Ebates to Marriott’s own website you will of course earn elite credit and have elite status recognized, as well as earning Marriott points for your stay and availing yourself of their member rates.

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Hotel Confirms Gutting of Hyatt Cash and Points Awards

by Gary Leff

hotel lobby
Oct 22 2018

On Friday I wrote about a report that Hyatt would be gutting cash and points awards November 1 as well as introducing new premium suite redemption options.

The claim about cash and points was that instead of redeeming points and a fixed cash price, you would redeem points for half off a hotel’s paid rate. That report now has been verified by a hotel which has received information about the change.

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