Category Archives for Hotels.
Marriott doesn’t let you book an award for someone else on the website. You have to call, wait on hold, an hope you get an agent that knows how to do it correctly – otherwise your guest may have a problem checking in. All of a sudden your good deed will turn out to be a travel nightmare.
I’ve reached out to Marriott for an explanation of this metaphysical mystery. Two years into the pandemic research scientists are still learning many new things about the way the virus spreads and the effects it has. But Covid-19’s effect on the intersection of points and elite status is uncharted ground.
Conservative opinion journalist Michelle Malkin reports that she and her husband have been banned by Airbnb for a speech that she gave to a white nationalist conference.
Marriott has been looking to reduce costs for hotels providing breakfast and they think they’ve found it for their extended stay brands.
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.”
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 »
