Category Archives for Hotels.
A woman’s story about being raped by a staff member while a guest at the Ritz-Carlton Maldives, Fari Islands is going viral on twitter.
Now that Marriott is varying the points price of a room constantly, and no longer has an award chart (or even a commitment to cap their redemption rates), they’re also changing how hotels get paid for member stays when redeeming points.
Marriott does not appear to be compliant with its legal settlements, and since they are falsely telling guests who book redemption stays that the resort fee is included in the points price at first instance, prior to disclosing a fee, that price should be honored – guests who are paying resort fees where this disclosure is made should seek a refund.
When Marriott Bonvoy members stay 50 nights or more in a year, they can select a benefit of their choice, and then again when they reach 75 nights. The most popular choice, by far, is “suite night awards.” 75% of Marriott’s most frequent guests select the ability to request priority for upgrades to suites. They can choose the nights where they want their upgrades to be ahead of other guests checking in. Beginning 5 days prior to arrival, Marriott will search available room inventory to process their upgrades. However actually using these ‘Suite Night Awards’ is a huge pain point for frequent guests. If members spread out their upgrade requests evenly across the year and across all hotels, they would probably all be confirmed! But very few people want to upgrade at a Sheraton in…
Last month we saw a Hilton manager breaking into a guestroom and sucking a man’s toes. Now there’s a story from a Hilton guest of a front desk associate trying to get into his room as he was coming out of the shower.
New hotels often take awhile to build up a clientele. They’re frequently quite empty at the start. Paid rates are lower as a result too (often but not always) as properties try to put heads into empty beds. Take Hyatt’s brand new Regency in Conroe, Texas that’s just opened – they expect to average just 30% occupancy for the rest of the year. It makes sense to use a chain’s loyalty program to do this.
A couple tried to pick the lock of the hotel room door at Holiday Inn near the San Jose airport. The guest inside called the front desk, who confronted the couple.
They claimed to have been “looking for a friend” and that they’d “knocked on the wrong door.” Knocked, it seems, with a tool to break into the room? The guest videoed the attempt.
The owners of the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain Resort went to the Arizona Court of Appeals to get a refund on state taxes they paid for Marriott award nights that members redeemed. They argued that since they’re paying for points when members earn them, points redeemed are really a reimbursement not new taxable revenue.
One man is a hero to us all, making baby back ribs in his bathroom. He uses a towel to help strip and remove the membrane. He dumps the rib rub out over the meat at the sink. Then he cooks it with a hair dryer. For four hours. He then takes out the dish to add a honey glaze before returning the ribs to the “oven” for an additional three hours of cook time.
More hotels should simply state, as this one does, that the add-on fee doesn’t actually get you anything. They should stop pretending you get some bundle of value when you don’t.
I actually like that this hotel doesn’t bother displaying a list of bogus benefits like a once a week yoga class outdoors at 3 a.m. in winter and a free underwater basket weaving class with mandatory extra charge for snorkel gear.
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 »
