Category Archives for Hotels.
I spent an April long weekend in Charleston. Hyatt has a partnership with SLH Hotels that allow you to redeem points and earn elite nights and points for stays, which made it possible for me to stay at Wentworth Mansion. The hotel is charming. The service was impeccable. And it represented good value on points.
Perhaps the room just isn’t used very much and doesn’t get a lot of attention. Or perhaps they only assign it as an upgrade on one night stays, and it’s rarely paid for (or hasn’t been in a long time), and so on one night stays no one bothers to complain – they’re leaving anyway. So without guests letting the hotel know about maintenance issues, those issues don’t get addressed.
I fell victim to this myself – I didn’t stop at the desk on the way out, so didn’t complain about the condition of the room.
Hotel Indigo blames the Thompson Hotel for needing to replace carpet and furniture, says that odors in the hotel can’t even be eliminated, and that they’re out over a million bucks as a result.
One way that travel changed during the pandemic which will mean more business travel and not less is that companies doing more work from home will need to bring employees together for team building, culture sessions, and just to get everyone on the same page. Employees that formerly worked entirely in-office become business travelers quarterly, semi-annually or at least once a year.
Walmart has a new hotel opening. And the Walmart hotel is going to be an AC by Marriott, opening summer 2024.
I do not know for certain whether some concierges are simple overburdened with too many members and too many requests, or whether the service just varies tremendously by agent, but the experiences readers share certainly evinces a wide spectrum of experiences. When the program was in its test phase it had just four agents, and with the rollout five years ago planned for 15-20 agents in total across all contact centers and time zones. Hyatt won’t say how many agents are working in the program today.
I had reserved a points stay with confirmed suite upgrade at Alila Marea, but that hotel shut down for a private event and moved me to the Seabird Resort. It turns out that this was a lucky break because the suite I had at the Seabird was truly magnificent. Service and food on property were excellent, too. And I might never have stayed here otherwise!
We’ve seen re-launches of several hotel programs during the pandemic. Smaller programs like GHA Discovery and Shangri-La Circle are brand new. GHA, which has around 500 hotels but is adding several hundred more, was just a benefits program – but now offers cash rebates to spend at their properties (‘Discovery Dollars’). I really wish I had more opportunities to stay with both chains.
IHG Rewards has branded as IHG One Rewards – the one meant to signal that they’ve now ‘unified’ their brands, with all new elite benefits that even apply at Kimpton and Intercontinental hotel properties. With all these changes, which program is best?
Check your credit cards for erroneous charges billed by Marriott.
Marriott started letting members ‘top off’ free night certificates at the end of April. You can add up to 15,000 points to a certificate, making it easier to book rooms. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work, but Bonvoy members have been reporting that it’s gone very wrong.
Remember when some chains were putting stickers on the doors and co-branding their procedures with with cleaning product companies? It wasn’t that long ago. Now it seems we have the worst procedures of the pandemic – full services often not restored, but pandemic cleaning practices loosened.
Housekeepers represented by the union UNITE-HERE want guests to request housekeeping every day of their stay. More work for housekeepers means more jobs for union members.
But they aren’t wrong that without daily housekeeping, trash, dirt and debris builds up in guest rooms – and that makes it harder to clean, and often rooms don’t get thoroughly cleaned as a result.
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 »
