Category Archives for Hotels.
There’s a wonderful feeling returning home to a clean house. Early in my professional career I started paying a housekeeper to come, and returning home after they’d cleaned was a great feeling.
Staying at a hotel is wonderful when you get to return to your room and experience this every day. That is, at least where daily housekeeping was offered. Here’s what happens when it’s not.
They offer “chick-flicks playing in the cinema room” and drumsticks in the bedding, wallpaper, towels and even arcade machine. At ~ US$150 per night, guests can only stay a single night, though each room comes with $140 worth of free chicken that can be ordered via a ‘press for chicken’ button in the room.
If Marriott can’t deliver the most value to guests, those guests have options – more so than with airlines or car rentals in many markets. They don’t just compete against Hyatt and Hilton but also Airbnb.
However Marriott’s CEO – who says workers make too much money and guests need to have more sympathy for hotel ownership groups – says Marriott needs to balance “the expectations of our guests..and the financial realities that our owners and franchisees face.”
Several Destination Residences are now bookable with Hyatt points. Some of these are amazing properties, and even good value. However there’s a dangerous pricing precedent at some locations where there aren’t “standard rooms” and everything costs more than the standard award chart as a result.
Full service Marriott hotels in the U.S. were supposed to have their restaurants open July 1 which means where elite member benefits include restaurant breakfast that’s now supposed to be honored. Some hotels, though, are working angles to avoid offering it.
f you manage a resort hotel in Mexico, most of your guests may be coming from the United States. They need a negative Covid-19 test to fly home. Making testing convenient has been key to attracting guest. Hotels in Mexico – whose business depended on it – made testing easy and often included with a room booking. As a result business has boomed.
But if you’re running a hotel, what test do you get for your guests? Hotels want tests that come back negative.
Hilton’s CFO gave an interview promoting the strength of their hotels by claiming that business travel is already 70% back, and fully recovering now. Can he possibly believe that?
Right now, for some reason, award nights at the Conrad Bora Bora are wide open through March 2022. Book for 89,000 Hilton points per night (a great value), and they’re fully cancellable. If you have Hilton points there’s no reason not to book a trip.
And you thought you have been Bonvoyed, I don’t know that there have been many Marriott stays worse than this one.
A guest at the Marriott Puerto Vallarta Resort and Spa went to the ocean “for a midnight swim.” Nobody told her that this might dangerous.
Back in March I wrote about the JW Marriott Los Cabos charging award guests an extra $30 per night fee to stay, calling it “the most Marriott Bonvoy thing ever.”
This flat fee was described as a ‘service charge’. Paid rate guests pay a service charge of 10% of their room rate, and with paid rates under $300 service charges are lower for guests paying cash than those paying with points. Marriott is refunding everyone who was charged this fee for a points stay at this property and two others.
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 »
