Tag Archives for breakfast.
Free breakfast is a common feature of many hotel brands, especially in the limited service category. You’ll find it at Hampton Inn, Best Western and Holiday Inn Express among numerous others.
Here’s the thing: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hotel actually check that you’re a guest before giving you access. If you look like you belong there, you can park in the lot, walk in, and eat.
Four years ago Hilton eliminated free breakfast as a benefit for Honors Gold and Diamond members at U.S properties. In its place they offer a small food and beverage credit that can be used at any time throughout the day.
Marriott hotels decide whether to honor Bonvoy elite benefits. If they choose not to, you can complain to Marriott. And usually the most they’ll do is refer you to the hotel, who will tell you to pound sand. One guest wasn’t going to accept that.
Another Marriott hotel has surfaced ignoring elite member breakfast benefits.
This property has a club lounge, honors elite breakfast there, and refuses restaurant breakfast as outlined by the Marriott Bonvoy terms.
One guest tweeted a photo of the breakfast coupon at the Courtyard By Marriott Halifax Downtown where the pre-printed US$10 has ‘US’ blacked out, and the property would only honor 10 Canadian dollars (US$7.21) a 29% devaluation.
The Hyatt Centric brand can be expected to deliver inferior stays. It’s for hotels that don’t want to conform to brand standards, so there aren’t many standards. That’s the sine qua non of cheap owners.
Still, it seems to me that there’s an increasing sense in which Hyatt hotels are not abiding by program terms, or rather Hyatt’s rules seem to have changed for some hotels and customers just aren’t being informed.
Marriott responds that it is not a brand-wide change, but it is a change at this hotel, “This test is being run by the St. Regis Macao and not as part of a broader program change.”
This suggests that (1) Marriott is ok with the change, (2) Despite it violating the program’s terms and conditions. And it’s unclear what the result of this test will be – a permanent change at one property, or a test of a broader St. Regis change (aligning the brand closer to Ritz-Carlton)?
British Airways is still in cost-cutting mode. They just can’t help themselves. The latest is that they’re serving breakfast for lunch because it’s cheaper.
IHG has its Holiday Inn breakfast manual for managers on the web. It sometimes amazes me what hotel chains leave open and ungated. And there were some fascinating insights in it about guest preferences and also how to get guests to spend more in the morning. 30% – 50% of Holiday Inn guests eat breakfast on property, and they serve approximately 27 million breakfasts per year.
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 »
