Category Archives for Hotels.
In one of the sketchier things I’ve seen out of hotels in the United States, the owner of 27 hotels in northern lower Michigan takes reservations for their more expensive properties, and walks guests to the cheaper ones. They also own a deceptive website purporting to be the area’s “Chamber of Tourism,” recommending only their own hotels.
Last fall I found several Marriott hotels sell their rooms for less on Airbnb than at Marriott.com. Marriott isn’t ok with this and cracked down on the specific properties I noted, but the practice continues and one guest even managed a successful best rate guarantee against an Airbnb listing.
Hyatt’s Hôtel du Louvre in Paris all of a sudden stopped offering free night awards on points. Searching for stays, it appears the King Standard Room was gone entirely, and all rooms at the hotel that were for sale came with views. And those rooms aren’t standard rooms eligible for redemption. I reached out to Hyatt to see what was going on, and whether the hotel was compliant with Hyatt’s rules since I wasn’t able to find a single free night award in the coming year. Up until the end of May awards were easy to come by. Hyatt shares that the issue is the hotel’s renovation, specifically affecting the base level rooms at the hotel. [S]tandard rooms are more limited right now as many have been removed from inventory during some external renovations to…
There’s a one day opportunity to get better value out of Radisson Americas points with a 25% rebate on redemptions made on Friday, June 23. The chain’s top properties are available for a net of 37,500 points per night under this offer.
While the lack of daily housekeeping means that trash piles up in rooms and hallways, that it’s tougher to clean rooms between guests since the rooms become dirtier, and thus it’s more likely new guests receive dirty accommodations, as long as hotels meet basic cleanliness standards it’s hard to see making daily housekeeping a law.
Nonetheless do not ever believe a hotel chain or lobbying association when they say their practices are intended to benefit the environment. And here remember that the biggest advance in the history of public health that extends lifespans is cleanliness.
When the police get involve after threats of violence over accommodations reviews that may be a one-off, rather than representative of the platform. But it’s also a reminder that you don’t really know whom you’re renting from – or to.
Airbnb makes sense in towns where there aren’t suitable hotels. It makes sense to rent a full house for a large family or when traveling with a group of friend. But the current homesharing model is very broken, and as a result choosing Airbnb makes no sense for most stays.
The concerns I have with Airbnb, though, are hardly the only ones. Others have had far worse experiences.
You can earn 1000 bonus American AAdvantage miles per stay of two nights or more across 10 U.S. cities between July 5 and September 5, 2022.
This isn’t choosing ‘miles or points’ this is on top of the Hyatt points you’ll earn And it stacks on top of Hyatt’s existing partnership with American where American elites earn 1 AAdvantage mile per dollar spent with Hyatt and Hyatt elites earn 1 Hyatt point per dollar spent on American flights
With 624 hotels in total, this is just over $1 million per property (abstracting away from real estate). That actually seems low for the business, even though it includes few hard assets.
This seems like a real miss for Hyatt. Though the hotels are more downmarket than Hyatts overall, it would have given them some reach outside of the larger metro areas in the U.S. where they’re strong.
A reader explains why hotel guests are unreasonable, and we should be more sympathetic to hotels that are cutting services, containing costs, as they try to ‘make up’ money they lost during the pandemic. Here’s why that’s exactly backwards.
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 »
