Tag Archives for marriott.
Marriott has finally released hotel category assignments, letting us know the redemption pricing of hotels starting sometime in August. Hotels only received what category they’d be assigned to two weeks ago.
They’re highlighting that “Nearly 70 percent of all participating hotels can be redeemed for the same or fewer points.” That doesn’t actually sound good to me, though they point out 52% of hotels go down in price while 31% go up which is a little better.
We were promised these hotel brands would offer Platinum breakfast benefits. They don’t. They offer a food and beverage credit, which can be used any time during a stay.
That credit won’t cover breakfast at all of their properties, but the news isn’t as bad as it appeared at first — Marriott is updating their chart, which suggested the credit would be only once per stay rather than once per day (for the member and guest).
Marriott’s program is about cost savings for hotels. CEO Arne Sorenson touted this in the chain’s earnings call earlier this year, noting that “loyalty rates have been reduced [to hotels] already twice and they will be reduced a third time” and several changes are helping the chain drive down those costs.
Arne Sorenson thinks Marriott can out-Airbnb Airbnb by offering consistency, products, and service. His daughter tried an Airbnb once and assures him there’s nothing to worry about there.
If this is a growing piece of the market, Marriott needs to be in it. And they think that they can leverage their loyalty program to make it more attractive to customers.
Loyalty has two primary components: recognition and reward. That’s your elite program and your earn and burn proposition.
Hotel programs are tough to compare because you earn a different number of points per dollar spent, and redemptions vary wildly as well — the most expensive Hyatt redemption is 30,000 points while the most expensive Hilton redemption costs 95,000. We can normalize that by looking at the number of points earned, and the value of each point.
Marriott’s legacy program offered lifetime 75 night elite status, and those who already achieved that status in the Marriott program, or who achieve it through Marriott-only activity by the end of the year, get to keep it. Starwood elites weren’t going to be given that opportunity.
Shortly before Starwood announced a deal to be acquired by Marriott it agreed to spin off its timeshare business into a separate company, Vistana, which it sold to Interactive Leisure Group or ILG. ILG now holds the vacation ownership businesses of Hyatt, Sheraton and Westin.
Marriott Vacations is now buying Interactive Leisure Group for $4.7 billion. So an affiliate of Marriott will wind up owning the Starwood timeshare business Marriott itself was believed not to want two and a half years ago as well as Hyatt’s timeshare business.
Whether it’s Dan Eleff spending a million Starpoints to throw out the first pitch in game 7 of the World Series where his hometown Indians are playing or Pizza in Motion using points so his wife could have tennis lessons from Andre Agassi there are things you can do – worthwhile things – with points that may be better for you than just travel.
And Ed Pizzarello shares a video of Cliff Yow announcing an NFL draft pick.
Marriott is enforcing wall mounted toiletry dispensers in the showers of their managed North American properties. They’re not the only ones going in this direction, it’s cheaper and they get to pretend their motivation is the environment.
I have five concerns with wall mounted dispensers replacing individual bottles.
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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 »
