Category Archives for Hotels.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
While the Waldorf=Astoria Boca Raton Resort and Club isn’t really my personal style (I’ve never been a big fan of The Breakers, either) it certainly receives its share of plaudits and pulls high room rates in-season.
Since the YouTube video went up last night over 650 one star reviews of this property have been posted to Yelp. It’s overall Yelp rating has dropped down to 1.5 stars.
A year ago the Hilton San Francisco Union Square double charged guests checking out on a single day. A few days later they corrected the problem by double-refunding guest credit cards. So those guests weren’t charged for their stay.
These two countervailing errors, generating four credit card transactions, sat for a year. Then a full year later Hilton charged everyone’s cards again.
Bangkok is city where it’s difficult for me to pick hotels. Most everything is above average. Even the Holiday Inn Bangkok, at Gaysorn Plaza, is attached to the Intercontinental and practically the same hotel.
On the other hand there are very few properties that are so good they’re clearly better than all the others. It’s not a city where I stick to Hyatt, either, because while the Grand Hyatt Erawan is fine I don’t find it special.
The St. Regis was priced extremely reasonably for my dates and although the hotel is known for being great with suite upgrades, I decided not to just chance it or use a Suite Night Award but to pay for the suite. Long odds, as reported by others, but I hoped for a further upgrade.
Again via Free Frequent Flyer Miles, Chase now has its offer of 20,000 points for signing up for a Marriott Visa (a href=”http://www.firstusa.com/cgi-bin/webcgi/webserve.cgi?pdn=marriott_s20k&page=cont&mkid=65DF” target=_blank>personal and/or small business cards).Free the first year, the personal card comes with Marriott Silver status, and yes you can obtain both cards and even churn them.
In April 2005 I posted that the offer to Citibank Chairmans Card holders of complimentary Hilton Gold status was accessible by anyone. Some folks kept the status after signing up. Others had Hilton take it away. Some had Hilton say they were taking it away, but the status remained… The Fatwallet discussion of this deal suggests that it still works (by phone only, no longer online). Naturally, your mileage may vary.
Starwood’s significant devaluation got plenty of attention, but Marriott quietly made significant adjustments to its own hotel categories to much less fanfare. It’s been discovered, and is being discussed on Flyertalk. The summary:Changes in MR redemption were effective March 2, 2007. 14 hotels went down one category level, 535 went up one category level. And one member’s calculation of the impact of the change:Some quick calculations….approximately 20% of Marriott Rewards properties were impacted and the change is reported to be a 1 category increase. On a 1 night stay, that is an increase of about 33% across the categories. So it appears to be an overall devaluation of about 6-7% (33% x 20%). I can live with this as it is in-line with overall inflation in hotel room rates, unlike the ridiculous almost 20% devaluation…
Book at Hampton.com by March 31, 2007 for stays completed by April 30, 2007 and earn an extra 250 Hilton HHonors points by entering promo code H250.
A new promo for Hilton Gold status – this one soliciting Emirates Skywards Gold members, but apparently anyone can sign up using this link, which just enrolls you with promo code EMOD. New accounts instantly receive Gold status, hearsay suggests the promo will only last through January 31 and that status will last until April 2009 (I would have expected April 2008, but Hilton status sometimes just lasts awhile). Some promos have worked out well in the past. Others, like the Citibank Chairman’s offer for Gold status, have prompted Hilton to revoke the status when used by folks not actually eligible for the offer. (I know of some folks that got the letter revoking their gold status, and yet the status mysteriously remained.) So, as with so many of these things, your mileage may vary…
The Hilton American Express comes with an offer of 10,000 points with first purchase, 2500 bonus points for each of your first four Hilton stays charged to the card, and 30,000 points for spending $5000 on the card by March 31, 2007.
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 »
