Half Points at Fairfield Inn? Marriott’s Hidden Policy Change Exposed [Roundup]

by Gary Leff

News and notes from around the interweb:

  • New Marriott-United status tie-in benefit (HT: Daniel)

  • I’m supposed to just know all of these things myself but sometimes I gaze at Luxury Travel Diary for the best luxury hotels like their list of the Best Four Seasons.

    I never spend this much on stays, leveraging my points and status. That’s why I am kind of excited for Hyatt’s acquisition of Mr. and Mrs. Smith which has some of the really special world hotels.

  • Only Delta would set pricing for its new partner El Al’s premium economy saver awards at 270,000 miles roundtrip. Business is 320,000 between the U.S. and Israel!

    But because they’ve still never bothered to gut pricing for other regions of the world, Bangkok – Tel Aviv is 70,000 miles each way in business. The story of SkyMiles has been one of successively worse devaluations, first as tragedy but then as farce.

  • I so badly wished the series Pan Am had been good.

  • A Fairfield Inn is allowed to award half the Marriott points. How is a customer supposed to know this in advance? Marriott doesn’t even tell members when they update their terms and conditions – let alone what changes have been made to those terms.

  • It’s a real testament to someone’s character when they go above and beyond like this, even though there’s no real personal benefit to their doing so.

  • As they say, the D in D0 stands for Dirty. Cleaners aren’t given enough time to clean planes between flights, and what little cleaning there is frequently gets sacrificed if an inbound flight is running even a couple of minutes behind.

  • I was re-reading this list of the 15 greatest miles and points deals ever (I wrote it before SimplyMiles Christmas 2021, which would have made the list) and got really, really nostalgic.

    My best-ever were Goldpoints/Valumags earning transferable points at less than a penny apiece – 20 years ago when those points went a lot farther; Track-it-Back; and many others on this list.

  • The newest pain point in air travel is slowing down travelers who paid for convenience CLEAR is a tool, not something you always have to use every time. It’s how you speed up getting through security when PreCheck lines are long. If PreCheck lines are as short or shorter than CLEAR (some people just queue there out of habit?) then use PreCheck since it takes less time currently to process a single passenger’s identification in the PreCheck line.

About Gary Leff

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 »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. The Pan Am show was mildly interesting to watch.

    Shame on Marriott and Fairfield Inn, remember in the pre-internet days when you’d get paper vouchers for free nights after 10 at Fairfield? Remember when they appreciated your business at ANY of their hotels? Well, those days are gone it seems 🙂

    Clear is good Precheck is better but I’d stand in line at Precheck before a regular TSA line so I don’t have to take my crap out and shoes off.

  4. Funny to read your comments on Clear. You’re spot on. I was flying out of PHX earlier this week and people were lined up out the barricades for Clear but PreCheck was maybe 7-8 people. I think people have this “I bought it so I MUST use it!” mentality.

  5. @Gary: It is professional malfeasance to lead with the Marriott Ambassador/United bonus without providing a link.

    Almost as bad as Marriott making this hard to find.

  6. As I indicated years ago, the Fairfield development for Copenhagen is part of a dual-brand set-up (with a Residence Inn) being done by notoriously cheap Core Hospitality. And Marriott has been kissing up to Core for a while now, as it’s Marriott’s gateway into limited service brand expansion in Scandinavia.

  7. To reduce the workload for CLEAR ambassadors at DTW, the CLEAR representative directs you directly to the TSA line as the CLEAR ambassador wants to avoid scanning your eyes or matching your fingerprints. When you point out that CLEAR was paid an annual fee of $189 for their services, it is evident that CLEAR only wants your money without providing any helpful service. Over the last four months, I had to pull out my government ID for CLEAR because CLEAR let some passengers through without proper security screening. Gary is correct. It is sometimes faster to avoid the CLEAR line when the TSA PreCheck line is faster.

  8. Are you supposed to give the trash left behind by the previous traveler to the flight attendant or are you supposed to throw it in the aisle?

  9. It’s about time they shut down the PreClear line cutting service offered by CLEAR.

    It’s a prime example of what’s wrong with governments giving monopoly contracts to private companies: the fleecing of citizens to make outsized profits.

Comments are closed.