Ease of Travel » Hotels

Le Meridien Hotels – Get 3rd Night Free

jim — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 04:39:53 +0000

Mastercard is running a promotion where you get the third night free after you purchase the first two nights at a Le Meridien hotel, details are available at the Mastercard website. Book your reservation at the Le Meridien website or call up 1-800-543-4300 and request promo code MASTERCARD.

Expires Dec. 31st, 2005.

Hyatt Gold Passport Free Night Promotion

jim — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 12:47:12 +0000

Faster Free Nights at Hyatt!
Earn a free night at Hyatt worldwide after every two eligible stays when you pay with your MasterCard® card from September 1 through November 30, 2005. Redeem your Faster Free Nights Award(s) between September 15, 2005 and January 31, 2006.

I’ve never heard of such a generous rewards program before. If you travel on Hyatt and aren’t yet a member, sign up. If you are already a Hyatt Gold Passport member, you’ll have to register to get in on this offer.

Marriot Reward Point = $0.004

jim — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 21:01:22 +0000

Murray of Capital Ideas recently cashed out some of his Marriott Reward Points and sold the merchandise on Ebay. With some numbers he calculated that each point was worth approximately $0.004 (four-tenths of a penny) and when each dollar spent accrued 13 points, he was getting about 5% cash back. It’s always good to figure out how much an esoteric “point” is worth but remember that your conversion rates (points to merchandise to ebay sale) may vary!

Hotel Chain Offers Incredible Rewards Program

jim — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:29:03 +0000

CNNMoney reports that InterContinental Hotels Group is going to kick off a new frequent guest rewards program that will give members the ability to spend their points on any hotel that accepts American Express cards. A guest accrues points in the Priority Club and, as part of the new “Any Hotel, Anywhere” program, they can redeem it for cards they can use anywhere. They’re also running a promotion where they’re going to distribute luggage tags and one out of six will have a code that gives them free stays at the hotels (you enter the code online).

InterContinental Hotels Group operates InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Crowne Plaza Hotels & Reports, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, and Candlewood Suites.

No-Frills London EasyHotel

jim — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 19:25:01 +0000

It’s like they saw the Geico TinyHouse commercial and thought it would make a great business model for a hotel room – they may be right. Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who brought you the no-frills airline EasyJet, now has EasyHotel – a no frills, ridiculously cheap, tiny hotelier. Featured on CNN’s Business Traveler site, the rooms range in size from 60 to 80 square feet at a maximum cost of $90 a night. However, EasyHotel might not be the cheapest option depending on where you’re going.

The hotel will have no entertainment, food, and your room will probably consist of only a bathroom and bed (maybe a window). Even the reception desk will only have one person – and he’s a robot. Alright I’m kidding, it’s not a robot but there’s only one person ever. They’re trying to capture the market above bed and breakfasts but below full hotel chains, claiming to be more reliable than a B&B.

The first easyHotel has 34 double bedrooms and is situated in a west London terraced property that used to house a 20-room bed and breakfast-style hotel.

A potential downside is that they aren’t necessarily the cheapest out there!

However, media reports suggest that easyHotel may not be the cheapest option in the area. Local bed and breakfast hotels offer rooms for about £38 ($67), which include satellite television, breakfast and windows.

Bad Trip? Get Something Free

jim — Fri, 05 Aug 2005 19:49:56 +0000

Gerri Willis writes a daily column of five tips and today they feature things you can do in the event of bad service or a bad product, as it relates to travel. Some of these are common sense, you may already do these things, others are on that border of where you aren’t sure if it’s customary to ask or if the company will laugh at you. This covers airlines, cruises, hotels, tours, and online travel agencies (Expedia, Travelocity, etc).

For flights:
For delayed flights, ask the airline to switch you over to another airline with the airline paying the difference. For delays, ask for meal vouchers. For overnight delays, ask for a hotel room. If it’s just a bad flight, ask for frequent flier miles and they may give you 500 or 1,000 miles. It’s harder with airlines because they’re in financial trouble.

If you want to file a formal complaint against the airline, you can e-mail the Aviation Consumer Protection Division of the Department of Transportation at airconsumer@ost.dot.gov. Or you can call at 202-366-2220.

For cruises:
Go straight to the services desk to try to get the problem resolved immediately, sometimes if you complain they’ll give you some free onboard credit for services like the spa, drinks, etc. If bad weather makes you miss a destination or something, ask and you will get cash to spend on the next cruise if it’s serious enough.

To file a complaint about your cruise, contact the Federal Maritime Commission at www.fmc.gov.

For hotels:
Solve problems on the spot, a complaint later won’t get a good response. You probably won’t get free stuff out of it but you usually can get your problem resolved.

For online travel agencies:

Online agencies like Expedia.com are doing millions of transactions over a period of a month. [travel writer and ombudsman Chris] Elliott says there’s bound to be some errors. “They’ve developed this system that deflects complaints. If you send them an e-mail, they may send you a voucher. Don’t take that funny money. Get a check,” he says.

Hotels To Change Sheets Less

jim — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 13:18:48 +0000

CNN definitely made this sound a lot worse than it was: Hotels said to change sheets less often makes you think you’re going to have to sleep in the dried sweat of half a dozen previous guests… what it really means is that on extended stays, hotels aren’t going to change your sheets everyday. I would prefer they didn’t change it everyday, think of all the detergent washed down the drain, all the water wasted, and all the fabrics being worn from constant washes. Shareholders and Mother Earth smile at these decisions.

“It’s a growing industry trend,” Steve Samson, an executive with Marriott International (Research), the world’s largest hotel chain, told the paper. Marriott’s more upscale, full-service hotels began switching to every three days earlier this year, the paper reports.

Privately-held Global Hyatt Corp. went from changing each guest’s sheets daily to every four days last year, according to the paper.

Some leading chains, including Holiday Inn, do not have uniform policies on sheet changes across the chain, according to a survey of companies by the paper. Some lodging companies, including Sheraton, Westin and St. Regis, all owned by Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide (Research), still make daily sheet changes.

Double and Triple Check That Hotel Bill

jim — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 23:55:44 +0000

Jason Womack of In The Life had a very eye-opening post today referencing an article from USA Today about how hotels, either purposefully or by accident, overcharge patrons. Both articles reference a review by Corporate Lodging Consultants, a company that negotiates hotel rates for various companies; of one of their client’s charges within the last twelve months. The results? 11.6% of the bills were incorrectly charged with an average overpayment of $11.35 a night. Extend that to 1.4M rooms a night, the US average, and that means approximately $500M in overcharges.

What makes it worse is that it appears that a lot of these errors are commonplace. American Express said that “that room rates quoted by central reservation systems differed from negotiated rates 56% of the time.” A “vast majority” of which benefited the hotel (duh!)… FIFTY SIX PERCENT!? That’s ridiculous. The stories in the USA Today article explains are very eye-opening; I suggest you check it out (especially about how someone was charged $16 for picking up a bottle of water).

Here are the stats:

Kansas-based Corporate Lodging Consultants examined hotel room charges of a major client for the 12 months ended April 30. Study highlights:

Nightly charges examined: 624,606

Nightly charges that varied from the negotiated room rate: 72,269, or 11.6%.

Total overcharge: $820,250.

Average overcharge: $11.35 per room per night.

Source: Corporate Lodging Consultants

There’s also a story about how Florida’s attorney general’s office is investigating four hotel chains for illegally overcharging folks…

Personally, I’ve always double checked each and every charge (hotel, airfare, everything) because mistakes always happen and now, given the statistics, you probably should too.

Manufacturer Types of at Different Hotel Chains

jim — Tue, 31 May 2005 13:46:34 +0000

Quite possibly one of the only reasons to pick one hotel over another is because of their beds… a bad night’s rest is reason enough never to return to a hotel chain regardless of price. So wouldn’t it be useful if someone listed all the types of beds in each of the major US hotel chains? Wouldn’t it be helpful to know that the Radisson is planning on replacing over 90,000 of their beds with the new Select Comfort Sleep-Number mattresses?

Westin – Heavenly Beds
I’ve personally slept in these beds and they’re phenomenal. They’ve always had a catalog in their rooms with these beds for sale. The ensemble is pricey though.

Raddison – Select Comfort
I’m not sure when the roll-out is supposed to be complete but the Radisson is to replace 90,000 of their mattresses (90% of mattresses in some locations) with the new Select Comfort Sleep Number mattresses, where you can change the firmness of the mattress on each side independently.

Sheraton Four Points – Sealy Posturepedic Plushtops
Despite being called the Sweet Sleeper, it’s really a Sealy Posturepedic Plush-top mattress. I’ve never slept at a Sheraton but these plush-top mattresses typically are quite comfortable.

Marriot – Sealy Posturepedic Double-Pillowtop
They’re only planning on replacing the bedding – putting in high quality sheets, more pillows and softer mattress covers. Many of the Marriot’s mattresses are the Sealy Posturepedic brand double-pillow top mattresses.

It’s only at the major chains will you find the mattress type strictly regulated by the parent company. At many Red Roof Inns or Motel Six’s, the regulation isn’t as tight so the mattresses used at those places vary from site to site. Typically though you won’t find a nice Sealy or Simmons mattress at your typical sub-$80 a night hotels, unless you get a major chain from a site like Expedia or Travelocity.

500 Free Hilton HHonors Points – Short Survey

jim — Thu, 26 May 2005 20:22:13 +0000

Get 500 Hilton HHonors points for filling out a short survey. Survey Link Here.

Five hundred points for your thoughts?

At Hilton HHonors® we’ve decided to make your Hilton Family experiences more rewarding than ever and to reward you with HHonors bonus points, too.

Introducing our new Hilton HHonors My Way e-mail – your own personal monthly e-mail designed to bring you information about your HHonors account, special offers, promotions and events that are relevant to your unique needs and interests. Welcome to news and information your way.

To customize the My Way e-mail for you, please complete the following survey. It’s just seven questions and should only take a few minutes to complete and we’ll give you 500 Hilton HHonors bonus points.* It’s a classic win-win situation, so please complete the survey now.

* The 500 Hilton HHonors bonus points will be awarded one time only per member for surveys completed and submitted by December 31, 2005. Bonus points will post to member’s account within 3-5 business days. Further changes to a member’s preferences do not qualify for additional bonuses.

Valid until December 31st, 2005.