Category Archives for Hotels.
Eliminating housekeeping is bad for guests, but it is bad for hotels too. It eliminates part of what differentiates them from homesharing, gutting their competitive advantage. Given the role that hotels, and Hilton in particular, trumpeted in recent years playing fighting sex trafficking and mass shootings, how can they plausibly cut this from their budgets?
I can be down with most any party, but this party bus just doesn’t seem “on brand” for an airport Marriott.
Guests have different expectations in different parts of the world. Daily housekeeping will remain in Asia, because guests there expect rooms to be clean. However based on U.S. guest expectations rooms won’t automatically be cleaned during a stay in this country. That seems odd to me, since we’ve spent the past 16 months talking about hygiene, learning to wash our hands for a full 20 seconds, and lysoling everything in sight.
The Marriott Courtyard in Bentonville, Arkansas is currently offering a ‘mules stay free’ rate of $79 per night, and it’s being promoted by the mayor of nearby Pea Ridge.
When have you ever been able to bring a mule to a hotel before? A giraffe, sure, but not a mule.
A comic book store in Houston, the Third Planet Sci-Fi Superstor, is suing the Crowne Plaza hotel next door for negligence because of all of the indignities our superheroes have had to endure from the IHG property’s guests. And they’ve put their suit in the form of an actual comic book, filed with the Harris County courts.
Hilton Honors was a weak loyalty program to begin with. It was less rewarding for your spend than you realized in terms of free nights earned – it offers lower rebates for both general members and for top elites than the other major chains (I show my work) – and more modest elite benefits than Hyatt and even the consistently inconsistent Marriott.
However what Hilton had going for it is breakfast. That was offered at all brands, without exceptions, and offered even to Golds. Gold is more or less a giveaway level, available via many credit cards and historically bundled via a number of promotions.
Your travel reservations are never guaranteed, if the travel provider can sell your trip to someone else for (enough) more money. I wrote recently about Hilton cancelling all summer reservations at a Hawaiian hotel property, leaving guests with few options when the hotel had a chance to sell out to a single group booking. Now a similar situation has happened with Hyatt, though unsurprisingly Hyatt did more for the guests that were bumped.
A customer booked at Alila Ventana Big Sur in September on points for their 25th anniversary found that their reservation was being cancelled by the hotel because the property got a better deal from a group booking.
A traveler reports that Hilton’s Hampton Inn & Suites Las Vegas-Henderson has a creative new way to squeeze guests. They are automatically adding tips to guest bills, and they aren’t telling anyone.
A month ago Hilton announced that for the second half of 2021, a food and beverage credit would replace breakfast as an elite benefit at U.S. properties. They’ve now shared all of the details about how this will work.
Two Florida Congressmen – Bill Posey (R-FL) and Charlie Crist (D-FL) – have proposed legislation that would prevent the federal government from negotiating lower rates on lodging than what they paid based on 2019 rates. They want to make sure the government pays more than it has to for travel.
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 »
