Category Archives for Hotels.
Despite some information out there to the contrary — you can book award rooms now to lock in availability, and then get any points price difference for the same room back in late summer or fall if the points price of the hotel drops. And that’s true even if the hotel is sold out or is sold out of standard rooms.
Marriott offers ‘travel packages‘ where you redeem points for airline miles and a seven night hotel stay (there are also 5 night packages, intended for timeshare owners, these have become tougher to get if you aren’t a timeshare owner).
The value here is that you get transfers of points to miles at a rate that’s good enough you’re more or less getting a free hotel stay thrown in.
I’m seeing a ton of coverage of Marriott’s new award chart lauding the top points price of the most expensive hotels. For instance, Dan’s Deals: wrote AMAZING! Marriott’s New Award Chart Is A Dream Come True For Aspirational Hotels. This is indeed good news, but it needs to be tempered.
In many cases this won’t actually be a price cut of two-thirds like it appears at first glance.
Marriott has finally released hotel category assignments, letting us know the redemption pricing of hotels starting sometime in August. Hotels only received what category they’d be assigned to two weeks ago.
They’re highlighting that “Nearly 70 percent of all participating hotels can be redeemed for the same or fewer points.” That doesn’t actually sound good to me, though they point out 52% of hotels go down in price while 31% go up which is a little better.
Frequent Miler asks “Is Hilton considering new elite benefits?”
Head for Points reports on attending a Hilton event that bloggers were invited to. And in fact says “We were also given advanced notice of some new Hilton Honors member benefits which may come later this year.”
If there was ever any doubt about whether Hilton Honors had become a full revenue-based program, this should help disabuse that.
I’ve harped quite a bit about the lack of benefits for Hyatt elites at Hyatt Place properties, especially now that the program has eliminated check-in amenities. The program doesn’t allow top tier elites to confirm suites at Hyatt Place hotels. Breakfast is for everyone, or at least for program members booking direct going forward.
Since I rarely want a late check-out at a Hyatt Place the only benefit I experience is bottled water.
When Hyatt updated its terms and conditions with changes to expiration for new suite and club lounge awards they also added a reference to cash and points awards at MGM M Life destinations.
The Hyatt chain is too small, and the growth in properties they’ve achieved has been in the limited-service sector which means it’s of little help to the upscale guests that their loyalty program appears to have been built for.
Loews hotels is shutting down their loyalty program December 6. The Loews chain is comprised of 24 hotels in the U.S. and Canada. They say that “YouFirst isn’t enticing or relevant” and that set benefits don’t meet guest needs and they’ll continue to recognize their best guests without a formal program.
This is hardly the first hotel chain to shut down its loyalty program. Holiday Inn launched the first hotel loyalty program at the start of 1983 and called it Priority Club.
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 »
