Category Archives for Hotels.
There’s a common theme in all of this: taking care of guests, whether they’re infrequent (through use of small points to make stays better) to the most frequent (who have a truly seamless experience, and extending out into their air travel and not just hotels). That’s what I value most in a hotel chain, and something that I think all of them can aspire to. The new Shangri-La Circle, then, makes a nice leap forward.
Marriott doesn’t have control over its hotels, and properties tend to run amok. So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise – yet still seems more egregious than most anything that I’ve seen – when a reader shared that the Sheraton Puerto Rico Hotel & Casino is adding two separate fees onto award redemptions,
Not only is a ‘Bonvoy Fee’ something that isn’t disclosed to guests during booking, it’s forbidden by the program’s terms and conditions.
When I spoke with IHG’s Senior Vice President of Loyalty last week about the chain’s revamp of its elite program that is now in progress, she told me that they would be offering an award discount this week for top tier elites.
In fact they’re out now with an offer of 20% off redemptions and it is available to co-brand credit card customers.
Marriott is out with their first gambit: to make elite status-earning easier in 2022: double elite qualifying nights, and 1000 bonus points per night, February 8 – May 4, 2022.
Shangri-La’s Vice President and Head of Shangri-La Circle Kevin Siew offered both real insight into how the chain thinks about loyalty – and what’s necessary to deliver great experiences for guests regardless of the chain. So this was a very interesting hour, spent together via Zoom since he’s based in Hong Kong. My key takeaways included the importance of treating guests well at each interaction, regardless of their reason for a stay or meal, and contra most of the industry just how much vertical integration – owning the hotels and restaurants – actually matters for a hospitality chain.
Marriott is eliminating award charts, but they won’t tell us exactly when. So it’s a secret devaluation.
They say it’s coming sometime in March. That’s consistent with the original announcement that award charts would cease in March 2022. Some people have assumed this would mean March 1, 2022. And that’s possible, however a Marriott spokesperson tells me “we haven’t announced the date yet.”
There have been several stories reporting one piece of change that’s happening at IHG Rewards – the introduction of a new mid-tier level, a change in the name of their top tier, and new qualification requirements for status.
I spoke with Heather Balsley this morning. She’s Senior Vice President of Global Loyalty and Partnerships at IHG Hotels & Resorts. And she shared some other pieces of what’s changing now, and what’s coming in the next few months where the focus will be on elite benefits, the area where she seemed to agree IHG has historically had the biggest opportunities for improvement.
In explaining the no-notice elimination of air and hotel travel packages they say they cannot support category-based stay certificates once they eliminate award categories in March – so these packages go away, and any unused certificates can only be cancelled and converted back to points.
Last week Marriott dropped into their terms and conditions that they were eliminating travel packages effective January 19, 2022. This was apparently published in the terms and conditions too early, and Marriott removed this from their published terms telling me they “published prematurely..[w]e will have additional details for members in the coming days.”
However Marriott never told members in advance about this change.
Marriott snuck a change into their terms and conditions saying that they’re eliminating hotel and airline mile ‘travel packages’ from the program. These haven’t been useful in several years because of price increases and the elimination of 5-night packages. Except those 5 night packages still exist and you may have a short window to claim them.
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 »
