Tag Archives for starwood.
Through June 15 if you check into your hotel using the Starwood Preferred Guest mobile app you’ll receive 250 bonus points. The promotion applies to St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, Sheraton, Westin, Le Meridien, Tribute Portfolio and Four Points brands only.
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.
One of the aspects of Marriott’s announced new program that seems to annoy Starwood’s most loyal customers the most isn’t even where something is being taken away from them.
Under the new program all current lifetime elites keep their current lifetime status, even though the new program is going to have tougher requirements than the Starwood program did to earn that status.
In the new Marriott loyalty program they’ve largely taken the better Starwood elite program and the better Marriott earn and burn proposition — however Starwood members won’t see exactly what they’ve come to expect on the Marriott side and and Marriott members have seemed likely to experience some devaluation of points.
Marriott’s CEO says they’re making the program less expensive for hotels. That’s created a pretty strong starting point to assume that earning and redeeming points couldn’t offer quite as good a value as before.
As a short hand expectation many people figured that would mean that applications for the Starwood Amex product – the one I’ve had for 17 years – would cease August 1. American Express, though, says “the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express Consumer card will continue to welcome new Card Members now through August 2018, and beyond.”
Many people believe that means the card will continue to be offered indefinitely. I’m quite certain this is not the case.
It’s been an annual tradition for American to offer a bonus moving Starwood points to AAdvantage miles. And Starwood has occasionally offered a 35% discount buying points. But the two offers don’t usually happen at the same time.
After laying out the details of the new unified Marrott loyalty program I covered the new credit cards that will be offered.
One opportunity emerges.
Yesterday I wrote about the first rumors of a new combined Marriott-Starwood loyalty program coming soon. There would be 5 elite tiers and finally free elite breakfast extended to resort properties and 25 of 30 hotel brands.
It seems like we’re going to know soon enough, in fact there appears to be an announcement coming on Monday. In the meantime we’re hearing plenty about what could be included in that announcement.
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 »
