Category Archives for Hotels.
I’ve never realized that Marriott Bonvoy has a set of ‘supplemental’ terms and conditions and that benefits are completely different at all-inclusive properties. In typical Marriott fashion they’re complicated, because they do not apply to all all-inclusives. Instead these ‘special’ terms apply to new all-inclusives that are not part of a legacy brand, and not to Westins and Marriotts et al that happen to be all-inclusive.
The U.K. has strong laws that taxes and charges must be shown in the headline rate for hotels. They cannot advertise a price plus resort fee or service charges. The price cannot even be advertised excluding VAT (tax).
Yet many hotels in London and the surrounding area have a workaround for this. They’re adding a 5% ‘service charge’ to bills on top of the room rate which isn’t advertised or even disclosed during the booking process. The trick is that it’s a discretionary (optional) fee, which is to say that the guest can ask to have the charge removed.
Marriott is getting heat for eliminating award charts at the end of this month, but Hilton already did this in 2017 while claiming award prices wouldn’t go up. And every time a program has dropped published price lists, that’s meant an irresistible temptation to raise the cost of awards. They don’t even have to tell members that they’re doing it.
Hilton has just increased pricing at some of their best properties, though it will take a comprehensive review to identify just how many and how much.
Surely they won’t be able to ‘stand alone’ continuing to develop in Russia, even if the moves competitors made are mostly symbolic. On the other hand perhaps their press release was delayed having to check first to make sure it didn’t list Taiwan as a country.
A woman dressed up as a Marriott housekeeper to convince a guest to open the door to their room. She rummaged around the room at the Four Points Sheraton Bellingham, Washington while pretending to provide ‘service’ – and stole car keys, a wallet, credit cards, and $2300 in cash.
The arresting officer told her to turn the engine of her vehicle off – but she slammed it into reverse and drove off and led police on a high speed chase at over 100 miles an hour.
Your ‘free breakfast’ as a Marriott Platinum, Titanium, or Ambassador member is allowed to come off of a special limited menu. And it does not even have to include juice or coffee.
And here’s the important context. Hotels can get away with virtually anything at Marriott, and hotels in this particular ownership group usually try.
Marriott’s top tier Ambassador status requires 100 elite nights and $20,000 spend to earn. And they’ve failed to deliver benefits consistently to Ambassador members, and reduced the service provided as well over the past two years. Now they’re surveying members to see what’s important to them as they consider whether to invest more in their best members.
This is being promoting on social media by Airbnb’s CEO. But Ukranian refugees need a place to stay and this can easily take inventory off the market (restrict supply) and raise price.
Marriott has shared that they’re dropping award charts in March and moving to dynamic pricing. We now know that the date this goes into effect will be March 29, though the transition will be gradual and spread into March 30. And we also know how much more expensive some properties may become.
Here’s something of a new one as hotels begin re-introducing services that guests demand. The London Marriott County Hall has opened up its club lounge but they reportedly want to strictly limit costs. “the happy hour at the M Club [is] table service only…[and you’re] limited to two canapes per person.”
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 »
