Category Archives for Hotels.
A woman is suing the Hilton Dallas/Southlake Town Square after finding a camera inside the alarm clock at her bedside though it seems like it was placed there by a person who was pretending to be CEO of a nonexistent company, flew her into town for a job interview, checked her into the hotel under a fake name and provided her with the key. What?
The Hyatt Place Salt Lake City Airport charges a mandatory food and restaurant fee equal to 8.75% of your room rate. This is literally a fee for your free breakfast, and to pay for a restaurant that does not exist.
You should register, because it’s right in front of you and you won’t remember to do it later.
Even if you don’t think you’ll have Hilton stays during the promotion period, you might, and 2,000 or 4,000 points is better than not 2,000 or 4,000 points. You shouldn’t shift your choice of hotel chasing this promotion, but you should pick up the extra points for stays you’re going to make anyway.
Marriott made it harder and harder to use your points. Some readers thought they just wanted to make it difficult to use your points so that you wouldn’t but that isn’t actually true. The people at Marriott worried about fraud (especially after major data breaches at the chain) gained the upper hand over anyone that cared about the loyalty of their best customers trying to use their points.
The last thing I ever want when redeeming points for my wife’s travel, though, is worrying over whether or not she’ll be able to check in!
What qualifies as the ‘first stay’ during the promotion period matters since earning starts only with the second stay. If you had a long stay planned, indeed at one of the properties being extra-bonused, you might even want to mattress run a stay in advance of it to make that your second stay rather than your first.
But Hyatt quietly changed the date that first stays count…
In 2021 Marriott entered into a settlement with Pennsylvania over resort fees, promising to reform its practices. Despite the legally-binding commitment they didn’t actually do it. They received extensions, but still didn’t come into compliance. Now they’re being fined $225,000 and a court order requires them to comply by May 15.
There’s no question that Hyatt free nights are valuable, they’re free nights! But the rules around them make them exactly what I don’t want to use on the trips I could use them.
Back in the fall Marriott launched its lifetime status website. It features a thank you video from Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano and a couple of appearances from Senior Vice President of Loyalty, David Flueck. And it contains a number of statistics from your account.
The website also lets you order a set of lifetime Platinum (or lifetime Titanium) luggage tags.
The Hyatt House San Juan charges a resort fee but calls it a “Hotel Fee’ and has been billing guests for it that they shouldn’t.
When chains actually owned the hotels that they marketed, there was better alignment of incentives for maintaining and extending their brands (and they found it much easier to deliver promises to guests on-property). Managed hotels are usually though not always better than franchised properties. An ‘asset light’ model where the chain simply rents out the brand (franchised) can work – but needs a laser-like focus on defending and growing the value of the brand, not merely living off of and depreciating it.
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 »
