Category Archives for Hotels.
Hyatt CEO Mark Hoplamazian demonstrated again in his quarterly earnings call that he doesn’t understand the value proposition of his loyalty program. His metrics for success do not tie to his program’s own value proposition. Yet he offers some hope.
In Marriott’s earnings call yesterday Arne Sorenson laid out his thinking on the loyalty program that will combine Marriott, Starwood, and Ritz-Carlton in 2019.
The only thing from Sorenson’s remarks that worries me is that they’re driving down the cost of the program for hotels, although no doubt that’s a part of how they get properties on board with program changes they’re planning to announce in the coming months.
Marriott’s ‘Leadership’ prefers the Hyatt Regency LAX over the half dozen Marriott properties in the area.
When a hotel program promotes that you can use points for any ‘standard room’ available on property, you think that means the most common room at the hotel. It doesn’t. It means the worst or lowest category room at the hotel.
And some hotels use this to prevent members from using their points. Hyatt has had real problems with this at some of its premier properties.
Today you can buy Wyndham Rewards points at a cost of $11 per 1000 (so 1.1 cents per point). They limit you to purchasing just 5000 points per year.
Starting tomorrow they’re increasing the amount of points you can buy to 10,000 but also raising the price to $13 per 1000 (1.3 cents per point).
Devaluation just seems to be in their bones on the Marriott side, and the Starwood merger and Starwood Preferred Guest leadership appear not to have changed that. While they announced a reasonable set of category changes for Starwood the changes at Marriott are absolutely brutal: 21% of hotels are going up in category while just 5% are going down in category. The number of points required to redeem for a free Marriott hotel night is going up at over 1000 hotels effective March 6th.
Starwood is reducing the booking window — how far out you can make reservations — on February 11.
You’ll only be able to make reservations 350 days in advance instead of 550 (not all hotels loaded inventory 550 days out previously).
In addition Starwood has announced award category changes for 2018 which will go into effect March 6th.
When confirmed suite upgrades were introduced they were awarded at the beginning of an elite year, expired after 12 months, but could be applied to future reservations after their expiration date as long as they were confirmed prior to expiration.
Then with the new CRM Hyatt implemented an unintended consequence was that suite upgrades expired 12 months after being awarded without the ability to apply them to future reservations.
Earlier this month Hyatt was pricing several hotels below their normal published cash and points award prices. Most of those deals are no longer available.
However several hotels are again charging less than they are ‘supposed to’ for cash and points.
Hyatt reached out to let me know that two hotels would move up in redemption category at 9:00 p.m. Central this evening, meaning that redemptions will cost more points.
I love that Hyatt is proactively sharing changes even when those changes affect just two properties. I don’t love that Hyatt is sharing that information only with me and not with all members, and that they’re sharing it the same day the change is going to go into effect.
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 »
