Category Archives for Hotels.
A TikToker booked a night at an Airbnb in Bali for her anniversary. She’d found a ‘villa’ with an infinity pool that overlooked a rainforest. It was part of a larger property with amenities (plenty of hotels sell rooms through Airbnb!). There were good reviews.
She showed up and found an abandoned villa, a pool filled with algae, a restaurant that was shut down – the entire property abandoned. Broken windows abounded.
The CEO of IHG says that the revamp of the chain’s loyalty program, IHG One Rewards, is starting to pay off. Every company says the bets they’re currently making are great, and they’ll marshal out of context numbers to prove the point.
Here all we know is that travel is rebounding broadly, and IHG has historically gotten less mileage out of loyalty than competitors, so there’s nowhere to go but up.
IHG One Rewards is pricing many hotels at about half their usual award rate. This isn’t true everywhere or for all dates, but does appear to be worldwide.
You’ll find some Kimptons at 45,000 points; Intercontinentals between 35,000 and 45,000 points; Crowne Plazas from 25,000 points and Holiday Inns from 20,000 points. Again, not everywhere, but there are reports of Maldives and Bora Bora properties showing up at just 35,000 points.
There’s both a Hyatt Place and Hyatt House in the same building, the Hyatt Place Allentown / Lehigh Valley and Hyatt House Allentown / Lehigh Valley. They just opened last fall, and Hyatt.com even uses the Hyatt Place exterior for both properties.
They share amenities like gym, pool, and bar (there’s an indoor pool). Unless you need the long-term stay kitchen stuff of a Hyatt House, pick whichever one is cheaper. You’ll note that the property can even be a good use of Hyatt points, here’s a nice ~ 3 cent per point redemption scenario.
>Le Meridien Essex Chicago warned guests not to stand in the windows of their room or open the windows, because they’d be treated as an active shooter by Chicago Police.
Advertise one thing, charge something else, is the very problem with resort fees to begin with – but charging a different resort fee than what’s published on the hotel website seems next level.
A woman reports in multiple places online that last Thursday she was staying one night in a major city at a chain hotel. She showered, put her towel on the rack, and was “standing in the middle of the room completely naked, [when] another guest opens the door suddenly.”
What happened next is what’s really striking. The man didn’t leave. Instead, he started filming her.
With all the fees that hotels you’d think there’s nothing left to unbundle. However Hyatt’s Destination Residences Mauna Lani Point resort in Waimea has come up with a creative new fee I haven’t seen before.
In a move sure to impress Monsieur Thénardier himself, the hotel actually charges guests for damage they haven’t even done to the room yet through a mandatory $79 damage waiver fee on each booking.
there’s good value here. It presaged the Hyatt-SLH partnership, and offers the opportunity to credit cheap Las Vegas midweek stays for elite status. I also hope this promotion drives a lot of business to MGM since I’ve heard rumblings out of MGM that they’ve been somewhat ambivalent about the partnership.
Of course Hyatt will be gaining a bigger foothold in Vegas in its own right, bringing multiple brands to prime real estate as part of the renovation and rebranding of the old 2500-room Rio.
I’d booked numerous Starwood Preferred Guest stays where 5th night free covered the full premium room. As in so many things, Marriott doesn’t do this. That’s good to know when budgeting your points stays. And when you see a free night that isn’t free, now you’ll know why.
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 »
