Category Archives for Hotels.
A reader shared a recent Ambassador interaction that underscores just what the experience has become. They were asking for help with a stay next weekend and followed up after not hearing back about their request for four days. Some snippets from the response they received.
This G.M. simply has the wrong mental model, it’s the customer’s fault and the customer needs to adjust their expectations – pay more, get less – and customers shouldn’t go along with that.
Marriott wants you to think that they’re in the homesharing business, and that Homes & Villas By Marriott is an Airbnb competitor. Despite the tag line, “Private Homes With The Assurances Of Marriott,” that’s not at all what it is.
Did you know that Wyndham points can be redeemed for many properties listed on the Marriott site, and this offers a better deal than Bonvoy much of the time?
A conference of Uyghurs living in exhile, who advocate for the rights of the persecuted minority in the Xinjiang region of China where over a million have been held in internment camps, was rejected by Marriott in Prague out of a desire ‘to remain neutral’ on the issue.
Far fewer airport hotels have free shuttles than did before the pandemic. Hotels are short on labor, and they’re trying to cut costs generally, and many have dropped their airport transportation – one of the key elements of being an airport hotel. There are multiple reasons for this, Airport overnights are most common at major international gateways, and international travel slowed – though it’s coming back, and roaring back across the Atlantic with planes generally quite full. Airport hotels at outstations where crew overnight attract plenty of guests, but airlines need to provide their crew transport whether there’s a free shuttle for other guests or not. Hotels are cutting costs across the board, just like they’re eliminating automatic daily housekeeping and may not operate full restaurant hours. Hotels seem to have a frame of ‘we…
There are numerous built-in reasons why a hotel wants to engage in deceptive practices like resort fees. Marriott creates another such incentive for its hotels. Hotels get to charge these fees to award guests (Hilton and Hyatt do not allow this) and hotels don’t have to pay for points for the resort fee portion of a room rate.
Hilton has introduced advance upgrades for elites. Seventy two hours prior to check-in upgrades are automatically processed, and elites receive a notification and are able to select a room from the new upgraded room category through the Hilton mobile app.
It appears we now know the priority order in which guests get upgrades.
The Marriott Bonvoy program is, on paper at least, head and shoulders above the Hilton Honors and IHG Rewards offerings. Those other two don’t even guarantee late check-out, let alone promise that suite upgrades will be provided when a standard suite is available.
In practice, though, Bonvoy doesn’t live up to its promises.
Marriott has their own homesharing platform to compete directly with Airbnb, but Marriott hotels list at Airbnb and not Marriott Homes & Villas, and in some cases pull their room inventory from Marriott entirely to sell suites through Airbnb.
What I find perhaps most striking is nobody at Marriott corporate thought to Google “airbnb+[Marriott brand]” to suss this stuff out?
Given the threat that Airbnb poses to the traditional lodging model, I was surprised to read a review of the Moxy Portland Downtown that included the discovery that they sell their suite on Airbnb – and not Marriott.com.
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 »
