Category Archives for Hotels.
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.
The Sheraton Damascus is being used as a prison for the country’s business elite where the government extracts payments in exchange for their freedom. This has been an ongoing use for the hotel property for the past two and a half years.
Hotel guests are told they have to “deposit US dollars into the central bank in order to help stabilise the Syrian lira, or they would not be released.”
We’ve all experienced tipflation: an expectation that we tip more, and more often, than ever before. When you walk up to an iPad to pay for a purchase you know what’s coming next. You’re literally standing in line to pay for something you picked up from a shelf yourself, and you’re about to be asked to tip for it. How does this make sense?
And then you’re presented with choices, maybe 20%, 22% and 25%. When did tipping expectations go so high?
With current service pretty limited – a ‘light refresh’ generally just includes emptying trash, replacing towels, and making the bed without changing linens – there’s not much left to take away. Yet somehow the Hyatt Regency John Wayne Airport manages to pull farther on both levers – add steps to the request process, and perform even less service than a light refresh.
Right now overwater villas with a private pool at the St. Regis Maldives – an aspirational property if there ever was one – can be redeemed starting at just 88,000 points with wide open availability.
Actually finding room nights here is what’s great, since Marriott doesn’t require ‘all suite’ properties to release a minimum number of their rooms for redemption. And fifth night is free, making the cost start at just over 70,000 points per night for a five night stay.
World of Hyatt is a better program than peers, but it needs to be, because Hyatt still has a smaller footprint than similar efforts at Marriott, IHG, and Hilton. A customer has to choose Hyatt, and that takes effort, so they need to give customers a reason to do so. And that means finding ways to reduce pain points and deliver on promises. So I think it makes sense to prioritize items like these. What would be on your list?
If you want Hyatt status, you normally have to earn it from scratch. They don’t offer the same kinds of shortcuts that Hilton and Marriott do. Except for the next 5 days. Hyatt is offering 90 days of free mid-tier Explorist status and a fast track to achieve Globalist through February 2025.
The hotel doesn’t seem to really follow standard Hilton rules for award availability. Instead they seem to dump a lot of inventory all at once all of a sudden. That just happened, and now there’s availability starting in November 2023, getting really good in December 2023, and wide open for January – March 2024.
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 »
