Tag Archives for marriott.
Marriott, like some other hotel chains, refused to serve as detention centers to temporarily house people picked up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids.
Yet Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson has been clear that the chain shouldn’t be in the business of vetting the messages of each group that books a meeting.
The recognition benefits here aren’t strong, what’s useful is 4 p.m. late checkout with Marriott and and additional points earning when spending money with the other partner.
What’s significant is to see the continued expansion (in this case return of) the model of rewarding and recognizing elites of another brand in order to get access to their customers, much as American and Hyatt are now doing with their partnership.
Washington DC is suing Marriott over its resort fees. “Resort fees” are extra charges, on top of a room rate, that aren’t optional. In other words they’re part of the price of a room, but the hotel advertises a lower price instead. That’s on face deceptive.
Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson, who thinks you have to enter a passport number to make a reservation at Marriott.com (so their unprecedented data breach was just the result of saving information for your booking convenience) and who thinks problems with the Bonvoy program were just “noise around the edges” gave an interview where he defended the undefendable resort fee. Naturally he did so disingenuously.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
“Resort fees” are extra charges, on top of a room rate, that aren’t optional. In other words they’re part of the price of a room, but the hotel advertises a lower price instead. That’s on face deceptive.
Marriott hasn’t talked about the really valuable data that’s been breached, preferring to focus on expired credit cards and passports. The EU proposes to fine Marriott for a criminal hack of their systems, which is how the law works, but it’s not clearly the best way to drive collaboration between large companies and government agencies protecting against nation state attacks.
And indeed it’s government agencies that are the biggest violators of data privacy.
This is the kind of promotion you run when you don’t want to run one, but it lets them say they have one. The marketing budget must have been blown on TV ads and putting out IT fires.
Earlier in the week I wrote that customers were transferring points from Marriott to Lufthansa and they were just getting lost in the ether. There seemed to be a broad issue with Lufthansa transfers, and that this was a sudden decision on Lufthansa’s part that applied pretty broadly.
In this case Marriott is coming under criticism for how they’re handling Lufthansa’s withdrawal from points transfers because their points transfers are actually useful. Who would transfer Hilton points to Lufthansa miles if they had any other option?
If Germany’s Payment Services Supervision Act applies to ‘buying’ Lufthansa’s miles using points in another program, then they aren’t currently in compliance with the Act, in part because ‘e-payments’ are now regulated as traditional payment services. That means registration, government supervision, and “strong customer authentication” among other requirements.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
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 »
