Category Archives for Hotels.
Hilton is making two changes to Honors Gold and Diamond upgrades. Starting today they will be selling upgrades through the app. Beginning November 18 they will process automatic complimentary upgrades at Hampton Inn and Hilton Garden Inn hotels with the technical ability for them to do so.
Just before 2 a.m. on a recent Thursday night the fire alarm went off at the Park Hyatt Washington. There was substantial smoke near the hotel’s gym. Guests fled the building to the street. And while no actual fire took place, everyone was out of their rooms for a full hour.
Does a hotel owe anything to guests rousted from their beds for an hour in the middle of the night, and of course also losing however long it takes them to fall back to sleep? I didn’t ask for something, but still felt that a follow up letter of explanation and apology the next day would have been appropriate. What say you?
When you arrive at baggage claim and your luggage is more than you can push yourself, many airports around the world have carts for you to use for free. In the U.S. it’s far more common for you to pay to use a cart, like one from SmarteCarte. You’ll pay around $5 to release the cart at a nearby station, and then you can move your bags from the carousel to your ground transportation. Someone has to collect the carts, and then they get re-rented again.
But what if that $5 paid to rent the cart for an indefinite period of time?
Just click here to register and your status in the IHG One Rewards loyalty program will be upgraded in a matter of moments to their top tier Diamond status. Use it to match to your preferred hotel program if you aren’t going to stay with IHG.
Even as Hilton offers double elite nights for the last two and a half months of 2022 against still-reduced elite requirements for 2022, Honors has laid out what elite status-earning will look like in 2023: a snap-back to pre-pandemic rules, mostly.
Hilton’s new promotion: is double points on all stays with checkouts by December 31 plus 2000 bonus points for checkouts on a weekday. In addition Hilton is offering double elite night credit for nights stayed October 11 – December 31, 2022. You need to register for both, award stays count, and the offers tell us something about business travel and loyalty right at this moment.
A Marriott Bonvoy member writes about a recent award redemption experience – a flight delay caused them to miss the first night of their award stay, so they got the free night certificate back and the hotel charged them cash for the missed night. They were fortunate the cash amount was only $153. I’ve seen it as high as $2000.
Since the Lindner properties have focused on a primarily European market, it’s not surprising that many of the properties aren’t air conditioned. I asked Hyatt about this – whether JdV was going to be marketing hotels without air conditioning?
Marriott is no longer referring to the Fairfield Inn brand, instead calling it Fairfield by Marriott. I only saw this in the news that Marriott is expanding Fairfield to Europe and the Mideast, from its existing footprint of more than 1230 hotels.
A company built on Mormon values, that distributed the Book of Mormon, will be putting Muslim prayer rooms in hotels in order to gain access to new markets.
Hyatt is adding more than 30 hotels in 7 European countries, focusing on Germany and Central and Eastern Europe, by partnering with Lindner hotels to bring their properties into the Hyatt brand and loyalty portfolio.
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 »
