Tag Archives for marriott.
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.
Under the new Marriott program all lifetime elites kept their current lifetime status from either program and everyone had until December 31 to earn lifetime status under old program rules despite the new program requiring more elite nights than Starwood had insisted upon and no longer required minimum points for status as Marriott had.
One quirk of the new program though is that it will not offer lifetime status higher than Platinum (50 nights). Legacy Marriott lifetime Platinums were 75 night platinums so got to keep lifetime 75 night elite. Starwood members with similar lifetime activity nearly lost their cookies over this.
Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson comes off as out of touch with his customers’ concerns when he claims frustrations with their loyalty program are just ‘noise around the edges’ but that hardly seems to be a one-off example.
He gave a rather bizarre interview to CNBC at the Davos World Economic Forum where he floated the idea of recession being a good thing ‘to get it over with’ and suggested that Marriott was storing the customer passport numbers that were hacked to help customers.
Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson trash talked Indian hotel chains at Arabian Business in Dubai, suggesting that they might as well just stay niche players in India — they’ll never compete with Marriott.
Sorenson believes there’s no room for competitors now because of Marriott’s wide array of brands and loyalty program (“choice of price points, design sensibilities, and programmes”). He may overestimate their position, though.
Marriott is rebranding their loyalty program, with ‘Bonvoy’ launching February 13. There are no substantive changes whatsoever at that time.
Where does the money for this come from that the loyalty program is investing to transform themselves into Bonvoy? It comes from members, and more specifically from member loyalty accounts.
Marriott launched its new loyalty program August 18, 2018 aligning the benefits of Marriott Rewards, Starwood Preferred Guest, and Ritz-Carlton Rewards. All accounts were moved over from the Starwood platform to Marriott.
However they kept all 3 program names, even though there were no longer differences between the programs. This has to do with contractual obligations. For members all that was left to wait for was the new program name.
News and notes from around the interweb: Looks like all your can jet private flight app company JetSmarter is imploding. In the beginning they offered amazing deals (and burned tremendous cash). I only ever used them when they gave free trial memberships to customers with elite status and big mileage balances. The LAX Tom Bradley Terminal finally has PreCheck Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, on flying coach: When speaking to the Royal Aircraft Association back in 2002, Prince Philip commented on the British royal family’s air travel conditions. “If you travel as much as we do, you appreciate the improvements in aircraft design of less noise and more comfort,” he said, “provided you don’t travel in something called economy class, which sounds ghastly.” Pan Am 103: Robert Mueller’s 30 year search for justice bet you…
Hotel loyalty programs face a unique challenge that airlines don’t. Airlines set the rules and provide the product directly. Hotels have to get properties which are often owned and even managed separately to comply, with benefits like upgrades delivered consistently by individual employees at a front desk perhaps thousands of miles away. They rely on individual hotels and even employees to comply.
Embedded in a loyalty program as well is a philosophy of how to treat guests redeeming their points.
Marriott has provided additional information on their massive data breach. We’re supposed to be comforted that it’s ‘only’ 383 million and not 500 million records that were accessed.
Marriott still hasn’t told us anything about their notes on your as as a customer that were taken.
Unfortunately they’re investing in bad marketing when they need to be investing in fixing their IT — merged accounts that still aren’t right, elite status trackers that say members need only 75 nights for Ambassador status, and missing 75 night elite benefit options.
And if they are really that short of ideas for where to invest these dollars, to deliver strong branding, they might try putting the money into training customer service agents to give out accurate information.
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 »
