Category Archives for Hotels.
Marriott partners with UNICEF in the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific in a program where hotels can add donations to guest folios on an opt-out basis. Generally $1 is added per night automatically, but guests can tell the front desk to remove the charge.
Autopilot opt out is the opposite of thoughtful philanthropy, so I was sympathetic to a reader who complained about feeling shamed by hotels that do this.
New York’s mayor says half of the city’s hotel rooms are being used to house asylum seekers. Los Angeles said: hold my beer.
In March, voters in LA will consider an ordinance requiring hotels to report their number of vacant rooms each day, and make those rooms available to the homeless.
An interesting twitter thread asks for the ‘cheapest thing you do’ and a business broker makes the claim that “points cards” for hotel chains “usually give you lobby privileges.” That’s simply not true, although people use hotel lobbies for meetings and to work all the time having nothing to do with their loyalty program memberships or co-brand rewards cards.
A senior citizen – an Airbnb Superhost himself – booked a house for 8 siblings to stay in for their brother’s funeral. A total of 5 of them actually stayed at the property. Over the course of the week several people came over to pay condolences and care for the family.
Timeshare presentation deals can be pretty lucrative. There may be a great rate on a stay and then credits to spend on property and even points in a loyalty program, and all you have to do is give up a bit of time on your trip to listen to a sales pitch.
I’d far prefer a good deal plus points! But I don’t want to give up time on a trip.
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.
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 »
