Category Archives for Hotels.
Marriott is enforcing wall mounted toiletry dispensers in the showers of their managed North American properties. They’re not the only ones going in this direction, it’s cheaper and they get to pretend their motivation is the environment.
I have five concerns with wall mounted dispensers replacing individual bottles.
Hyatt has a little over 600 hotels. That’s one-tenth the size of Marriott. There’s Marriott, Hilton, IHG, and Accor as players and there just aren’t chains in Hyatt’s peer group anymore.
They did try to buy Starwood themselves but their complex stock structure (two tiered stock giving outsized control to the Pritzker family) was a stopper and Marriott bested them. They tried to buy Kimpton but IHG was willing to pay far more.
One of the aspects of Marriott’s announced new program that seems to annoy Starwood’s most loyal customers the most isn’t even where something is being taken away from them.
Under the new program all current lifetime elites keep their current lifetime status, even though the new program is going to have tougher requirements than the Starwood program did to earn that status.
My post on the new Marriott program includes a lot of detail you don’t find anywhere else, and that I haven’t seen picked up anywhere else.
The new program offers a way to ensure hotels comply with the new elite benefits Marriott promises.
In the new Marriott loyalty program they’ve largely taken the better Starwood elite program and the better Marriott earn and burn proposition — however Starwood members won’t see exactly what they’ve come to expect on the Marriott side and and Marriott members have seemed likely to experience some devaluation of points.
Marriott’s CEO says they’re making the program less expensive for hotels. That’s created a pretty strong starting point to assume that earning and redeeming points couldn’t offer quite as good a value as before.
A couple of days ago the developers of the new TWA Hotel unveiled a model guest room for the property that opens next year. It’s not inside the old TWA terminal itself (yet). Instead the guest room and hotel hallway are inside a vacant hangar at JFK Airport’s Building 87.
Inside the building is Jack Frye’s desk and chair, he was President of TWA from 1934 to 1947. They’ve even got TWA fire extinguishers. Yes the hotel will have a TWA museum.
The specific changes they’re making create winners and losers compared to the programs that are offered today. At reader Alex‘s suggestion I decided to walk through in a nutshell my first thoughts on how each group benefits or sees losses in the new program.
Marriott just announced details of their new single program. As expected Starwood was strong on elite benefits, and we get something closer to the Starwood program on the elite side. And Marriott was strong on earning and redemption, and we get something closer to what Marriott has offered on the earn and burn side.
Here are all the details, including many that aren’t included in their release or on the website.
Steve Wynn has exited stage left from Wynn Resorts amid sexual misconduct allegations. The hotel chain, which earns the bulk of its profits in Macau, is considered an acquisition target.
But the pending opening of its new $2.5 billion Boston Harbor property, slated for next year, is now in jeopardy. Just last week a constructor worker died on site. And now its gambling license may be at risk.
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 »
