Category Archives for Hotels.
Now that the new Marriott program has launched they’ve re-opened status challenges.
Normally Gold status requires 25 nights in a year and Platinum status requires 50 nights. However you can call to sign up and a Gold challenge requires 8 nights in 3 months, and a Platinum challenge requires 16 nights in 90 days.mo
IT is hard. No IT project ever has come in early or under budget. Things take longer than you think they will even accounting fro the fact that you know they’ll take longer than you think they will. However Marriott chose the date. August 18th. It was self-imposed.
It’s now been two and a half weeks. It’s past Labor Day. People are back at work, business travelers are about to start getting back on the road. The reasonable amount of patience that members have given has pretty well been exhausted.
At the end of the week Think Progress put out a piece critical of Hyatt for hosting the ACT for America conference at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City. A petition with 100,000 signatures was delivered to Hyatt demanding they back out of providing a venue to the event this coming week.
I’m unfamiliar with the group, but they (along with half of America) are described by the Southern Poverty Law Center “as an anti-Muslim extremist and hate group.”
Hyatt is out with their new promo and so is Hilton. Now we know what IHG Rewards Club, the loyalty program for Intercontinental, Holiday Inn, Kimpton, Crowne Plaza and related brands, will offer.
Offers vary my member. Here’s how the promotion works, and what I received. What’s your offer?
I’ve written in the past about the great auction values at Luxury Travel Diary, many of which seem to go for 30% – 70% off, probably because there just aren’t that many people bidding so you can scoop up bargains. Folks who already know about these auctions won’t like the added attention.
At the beginning of the week I spoke with Marriott’s Senior Vice President for Loyalty David Flueck for an update on the integration of Starwood accounts onto the Marriott IT platform as they launched their new loyalty program on August 18th.
I reached out to Marriott for another update on where things stand fixing issues.
Four years ago Orient-Express Hotels rebranded as Belmond. They had been licensing the name Orient-Express, and they found that while the name seemed familiar (because of the train) it wasn’t really associated with the chain and didn’t drive bookings. Although it’s not clear that Belmond served them better. Orient-Express is now an Accor brand. And Belmond is putting themselves up for sale. Accor could be a buyer, they’re trying to build the Orient-Express brand and could pick up twice as many hotels as their current 2025 goal and goodness knows they buy everything else. Hyatt is mentioned as a potential buyer, it’s hard to find too many hotel companies that have the resources to acquire a small luxury chain and for whom it would be worthwhile. Big players wouldn’t see three dozen hotels as moving…
Hilton has been running double points since May 1. Hilton usually runs double points, for instance they basically ran it all of 2016.
For some reason they weren’t ready to announce what their next promotion would be so at the end of July they extended double points through September 9.
Hilton has just come out with their end of year promo. They’ve used the extra time from that last extension to come up with something new.
On a scale of travel company IT integrations, Marriott’s new program launch didn’t go nearly as well as the largest travel program merger — American Airlines-US Airways — nor nearly as badly as the biggest debacle United-Continental.
While Marriott managed to get functionality up quickly to book reservations, even now 9 days later there are several lingering issues.
I spoke with David Flueck, Marriott’s Senior Vice President of Global Loyalty, to get a sense for where things stand — what bugs are still outstanding, and when we can expect those to be resolved.f
The new Marriott program rollout has been riddled with glitches. There are members who still show the wrong elite status, wrong lifetime status, and who still cannot merge accounts.
One interesting quirk of the transition that benefited members was discounted overwater villa award availability at the St. Regis Maldives.
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 »
