Category Archives for Hotels.
Marriott told us from the get go that their new top awards price of 60,000 points per night would last only until 2019 and that next year they’d start charging up to 100,000 points for their best redemptions with the introduction of a new category 8 along with low season and high season prices.
Marriott now says that category 8 will start in March and that the date for launching high and low season pricing is not yet known.
There are reasons to be skeptical that the breach took place in 2014, rather than there were records in the data warehouse which could have been taken that dated to 2014.
Regardless of what did or didn’t happen, and whom to blame, we’re clearly not getting the full story from Marriott. And since it’s our very sensitive personal information they failed to safeguard, we should be demanding it.
The reason Marriott will weather the storm of 500 million records being hacked is because all of our information has already been hacked. First, we’re immune to it. And second there’s really not that much new that’s going to be out there as a result of this network infiltration.
There are (4) things you can do to protect yourself.
A woman is suing Hilton for $100 million after she says an employee videotaped her in the shower at an Albany, New York Hampton Inn and uploaded the video along with her name to a porn site, and used to footage to blackmail her.
Santa Cruz, California will be the first place in the country to ban miniature toiletry bottles.
The ordinance was unanimously approved by the county’s Board on November 20th. It returns to the board for final approval on December 4 and will go into effect December 31, 2020.
Hyatt has launched its partnership with SLH hotels offering points and elite credit earning on paid stays, and points redemptions.
More options for where to use your points are better. Full stop. And there are some lovely properties included in this portfolio. This gives members more nice places to use their points.
f you’ve been a legacy Starwood guest, Marriott’s systems likely disclosed much of your personal information to hackers. Marriott announced that the Starwood reservation database was breached. They learned about the ongoing breach in September which they say had been occurring since 2014.
They are reporting access to about 500 million guest records, most including information like email addresses and passport numbers and some including credit card details as well.
Hyatt has launched their partnership with Small Luxury Hotels of the World, offering points-earning, elite stay credit and redemption at some SLH member hotels. Along with that comes a new more expensive redemption category 8.
At this point only 54 hotels are participating — nearly all in Europe — though Hyatt says “we expect for more SLH properties to join the program in the coming months.”
IHG Rewards Club PointBreaks are live. These are hotels they’re offering discounted redemption prices for.
There are 13 hotels available for just 5000 points apiece. There are 39 hotels in the U.S. alone at the 10,000 point level. Doubling the redemption price clearly opens up more availability, though it’s sad how few properties are now offered for 5000 points when all PointBreaks used to be that lower price. Four Intercontinental properties are available though.
Marriott combined their Starwood Preferred Guest, Marriott Rewards, and Ritz-Carlton Rewards programs into a new unified program with the same currency and benefits on August 18th. All accounts were merged onto Marriott’s IT platform. However they retained separate program branding for legal reasons, I’m told related to their timeshare contracts.
In 2019 two major things are happening with Marriott Rewards: devaluing points and renaming the program.
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 »
