Category Archives for Hotels.
In September a hotel guest was jailed for writing bad reviews of the Sea View Resort & Spa, Kah Change. American working in Thailand who wrote the review was arrested at his job and jailed over a defamation lawsuit filed by the property.
He spent a couple of nights in jail before being able to post a 100,000 Baht (~ US$3165) bail. He faced up to two years in prison if convicted.
Hotel breakfast is one of the most important elite benefits and something that’s considered standard, ironically, at most non-full service properties. But what happens when a guest expects to receive breakfast and doesn’t, either because of a change to the loyalty program or as a cost saving measure gussied up as ‘protecting guests and workers during Covid-19’?
The best part of this has to be the phone call from the Trump campaign advance team, dialing up the Four Seasons in Philadelphia. “Hello, Four Seasons, how can we help you?” “Do you have availability for an event at 11:30 a.m.?” “Yes, we have space available.” “We won’t need catering, would you be willing to do it for a flat $10,000.00?”
In the U.S. you generally check into a hotel, provide a credit card, and many guests don’t check out. It’s polite to let the hotel know you’re leaving so they can clean and turn over your room for the next guest as early as possible. However about the only selfish reason to check out usually is to make sure you get a copy of the bill.
In many parts of the world, including Asia, checking out is far more customary and can take a surprising amount of time. They’ll run your credit card again with you present and insist you sign before leaving.
Hyatt Place is changing its breakfast offerings. They are going to vary by region of the world. Guests will no longer be guaranteed a free hot breakfast at any Hyatt Place in the world, even if they are members of World of Hyatt booking direct. That’s a huge change.
This degrades the premium brand that Hyatt Place has built. You still get reasonably stylish large rooms. I’m a fan of Hyatt Places generally, at least the properties that aren’t ex-AmeriSuites. Fortunately the change shouldn’t affect top tier Hyatt elites.
The guest was arrested for possession of crack and disorderly conduct. His car had an “improper license plate” and he had no insurance, either. But he didn’t apparently have to pay extra for overstaying checkout time.
Right now, because of how three of their Hilton’s policies work together, 15 hotel nights are enough to earn Diamond status through March 2023
Marriott announced that Free Night Awards that were originally supposed to expire in 2020 or that will expire before July 31, 2021, will have their expiration date extended to August 1, 2021. In addition Marriott had previously said they wouldn’t expire any points due to account inactivity until February 1, 2021. That’s been extended to August 1, 2021 as well.
There’s been no known cases of Covid-19 transmission on US airlines. Sure US contact tracing isn’t very good. But even internationally and across the whole world there are only a few flights where spread is believed to have occurred despite around a billion people traveling so far this year.
Hotels too seem to be safe. There haven’t been documented cases of spread between rooms either in hotels or office buildings.
This month we lost ‘Eskimo Pies’ in a renaming to Edy’s Pie. So, too, the Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort which is being renamed Hilton Phoenix Resort at the Peak because they’ve decided ‘Squaw Peak’ is racist.
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 »
