Category Archives for Hotels.
I don’t look at average review scores for a hotel property on a site like TripAdvisor. A lot of reviews may be fake, and the reviewers may not have similar tastes or expectations even if they’re real. But there’s another thing that skews ratings: incentives by a property to post great reviews. Hotels that do this will get more positive reviews. That doesn’t mean it’s a better hotel.
Housing the homeless in hotels is hardly new. At New York JFK airport hotels it’s even largely expected. During the pandemic the practice accelerated. There were plenty of empty rooms. States like California, New York, and others turned to hotels to house the homeless.
Hilton Honors should treat elites as well as my college dorm! They should provide a choice between free breakfast or the smaller dollar credit. Hilton would still manage their costs while providing guest flexibility. That would turn a controversial move into a win that customers would love.
Hyatt has expanded its partnership with delivery service GoPuff, which offers food, office supplies, toiletries and other convenience store type items.
The reason you care is that most Chase cards are giving you a $10 per month GoPuff statement credit, if you have half a dozen Chase consumer cards you can get $60 a month in GoPuff credit. That, and perhaps also that Selena Gomez is now an investor. And because there’s a Hyatt points signup bonus now, too.
You should definitely register for the promotion – and do it now – because even if you aren’t planning to stay at all with Hilton during the first four months of 2022, you might find yourself surprised (perhaps you get stuck overnight at an airport!) and you’ll never remember to go back later and register. So get that part over with, because earning the bonus is better than not earning the bonus.
On July 1, 2021 Hilton replaced breakfast as an elite benefit at U.S. hotels with a daily food and beverage credit. This was temporary for 2021.
The concept is amazing (use the credit for a meal other than breakfast, use the credit for room service) but the amount was too low and didn’t cover the least expensive items in major cities. At some hotels it wouldn’t even cover a cup of coffee with tax if you tip (which is expected).
I wrote a little over a week ago that Hyatt would announce a new promotion of 2022 bonus points every 2 nights, Jan 15 – April 20. And they’re doing exactly that. One piece I didn’t share was an additional bonus for Hyatt co-brand credit card customers.
GHA Discovery is probably the biggest hotel loyalty program you may never have heard of. They cover 37 brands which is more than Marriott and they’ll soon hit 20 million members.
GHA – the Global Hotel Alliance – covers numerous smaller chains that skew towards luxury. The Discovery program is relaunching to become much more rewarding. Against the trend in the industry, the new program actually costs hotel owners more in order to give customers more. Elite status is becoming easier to earn, and benefits will become more consistent. And word is they’re even an easy status match.
A reader reached out to me about the Park Hyatt St. Kitts. The hotel appeared to be selling standard suites for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. As a Globalist (top tier elite) he wanted to book a room and confirm a suite.
However he reported that the hotel responded to Hyatt, when they tried to confirm the suite, that the suites weren’t actually available and that the inventory was a glitch.
There are two elements to loyalty marketing: recognition and reward. The former is the elite program, how you treat your best customers. The latter is rebate for their spend.
We can make some overall claims about best that will not apply to every member, every time, with their own subjective preferences. We can do this by looking at the overall earn-and-burn program, and by comparing the major elite benefits each program offers.
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 »
