When hotels aren’t making the award space available to members that they should I’ve had good success getting the loyalty program to intervene. I’ve had especially good success with Hilton, such as with the Waldorf Astoria Jerusalem and the Waldorf Astoria Grand Wailea on Maui.
So I had high hopes reaching out to Hilton Honors about the new Conrad Punta Mita. I asked Hilton why the Conrad Punta Mita wasn’t offering awards any night of the year. Initially I was told that “[the hotel isn’t slated to open until May so it might be a lag in getting all of the rates up and running.” However I pointed out that,
- The hotel had been offering redemptions and appeared to stop
- They’re selling rooms for cash, and program rules require that if standard rooms are available for cash they should also be available on points.
Credit: Hilton
After a couple of days they confirmed, “Hilton Honors redemption has been added to Conrad Punta Mita.” And indeed availability is wide open for standard room redemption:
In most cases Hyatt and Hilton have been pretty good about getting non-compliant hotels in line – although Hyatt’s Andaz West Hollywood, Andaz Maui , and Hyatt Centric Waikiki Beach are exceptions.
Neither IHG nor Marriott, of course, actually promise that all standard rooms will be made available as award nights to begin with. In fact Marriott just moved to further restrict award redemption at its legacy Starwood brands. So Hyatt and Hilton deserve double recognition – first for their availability policies, and second for policing those policies.
Readers reach out to me all the time with award redemption problems and I do my best to get them solved, week after week.
What about the Conrad Bora Bora and the Waldorf Cabo? Very very limited availability.
I recommend you include the area and hotel when talking about hotels which have regional names that are new or uncommon. i.e.
“So I had high hopes reaching out to Hilton Honors about the new Conrad Punta Mita near Puerto Vallarta in Mexico.”
@iolaire, in Gary’s defense, I would expect 95% of North Americans who read this blog to be familiar with Punta Mita. But understand it’d be off the radar for others further away. Not sure what portion of his readership is North America though.
I guess I’m in the 5% 🙂 Grew up in Alaska, in the DC area for past 20 years, stayed a week in Cabo and had a cruise stop in Puerto Vallarta this decade.
I figured it was in the Dominican Republic.
@Matt B – I had no idea where this hotel is.
@Gary – Thanks for doing the work on these hotels. I do have to put Hilton above Hyatt in this regard though. The average hotel (and there are a lot more Hiltons than Hyatts) seem to not play the petty games that some Hyatts do.
I guess my 95% guess wasn’t at the 95% confidence interval 🙂
Agreed, had no idea where this property is; had never heard of it, even as a Hilton fan.
I too had never heard of Punta Mita. Before being told by iolaire mcfadden above, I surmised only that it was on an oceanfront beach somewhere in some Hispanophone country or island.
Never heard of Conrad Punta Mita, but I’m no longer a fan of Mexico anyway due to the crime rate and corrupt police.
I would have googled “Punta Mita” but it would just take too long. @Gary tell me. Where is it?! Where???