Category Archives for Hotels.
The Eliza Jane hotel in downtown New Orleans on Magazine Street was a great base for a four night stay, using category 1-4 free nights. I was upgraded to a Publisher’s Suite.
I dunk on Marriott a lot for its failure to deliver on promised benefits, for its clueless customer service agents, and its broken IT. And Starwood members are generally unhappy with the Marriott Bonvoy program. To be fair, benefits aren’t received as consistently as they used to be for Starwood members. The credit card’s earning isn’t as rich. And top status is harder to earn, with a minimum spend requirement at the 100-night level to receive ‘Ambassador’ service that no longer includes an individual assigned Ambassador.
However, for Marriott Rewards program members the Starwood merger has surprisingly been a blessing and that’s really easy to forget.
The Fort Wayne, Indiana Fairfield Inn by Marriott is billing guests a surprise “energy surcharge” that appears to be 4% of the room rate. This surcharge isn’t disclosed to customers when booking their room.
Marriott’s new CEO admits that Bonvoy isn’t as generous as Starwood Preferred Guest was. He dismisses guest desires for hotel services as customers having a “short memory.” And he explains lack of service and generous benefits as a need to hold down hotel owner costs.
Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano makes two points about low wage workers in a recent interview. Amazon pays entry level workers too much, and that’s making it hard for hotels to hire cheap ‘in some markets’. And after mass layoffs in 2020, workers don’t trust hotels as a place to build a long-term career.
At Hyatt’s Motif hotel your room rate does not include the coffeemaker, TV, alarm clock, iron, mirror, of bath products.
For $20 per night you get unlimited local calls if you’ve somehow forgotten your cell phone; access to an electric vehicle charging station (Hertz gives me those all the time!); and an in-room Alexa that will let Jeff Bezos listen in while you’re doing you-know-what.
Hyatt has a partnership with SLH Hotels that lets you earn points and status at those properties (when booking paid rates through Hyatt) and redeem points at these same properties, though not all of the hotels are part of this arrangement.
Today Hyatt announced another 20 joining the partnership although for one of these no points redemptions are permitted. But then it’s not a hotel it’s a ‘sustainable sea expedition of Ecuador.’ Ok…
Taken together a booking through the Marriott platform could make sense. Currently inventory is sufficiently scattered that I think it’s important to check multiple platforms when planning a trip.
The Hilton Burlington Lake Champlain is charging guests a surcharge to pay by credit card, and appears to be calling it a tax. Hilton has a brand standard against this. Imposing this fee on the standard method of payment is drip pricing. And mislabeling it a tax is fraud. Surely American Express won’t be pleased, either, to learn a Hilton is charging their cardmembers extra to pay with a Hilton co-brand.
Daily housekeeping at full service hotels: tired, wired, or inspired?
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 »
