marriott

Hotel Points Programs Offer More Than a Free Room

With airline miles the rewards are pretty clear, more miles generally equals free trips or the highly desirable first class upgrades, but what do you get for hotel reward points? The answer is more complex than you might think. The Wall Street Journal recently chronicled some of the more extravagant offers available to those with a large amount of hotel points. For example, Michael and Georgia Soares used their huge amount of Starwood Hotels & Resorts points to spend one night with John Travolta and the cast of the movie "Hairspray" at the film's New York premiere.

Loyal hotel chain customers sitting on a stack of points are in a good position as major hotel companies such as Starwood, Global Hyatt Corp., Hilton Hotels Corp., and InterContinental Hotels Group now offer customers enrolled in their loyalty programs the option to spend their points on "unique experiences" rather than just getting free nights or room upgrades.

Why are hotels offering these types of programs? One reason is that they want to create more loyalty and good publicity for their programs. Another reason may be that these once-in-a-lifetime offers often use up a lot of points. As customers rack up more points. hotels lose more money on points programs. As the WSJ article explains it, hotel companies often don't own many of their own properties, an independent party owns the building and manages the property under the hotel brand. The independent party must be paid for all of those free nights . A special fund is set up to pay the costs of potential redemptions of points and a hotel brand must make sure that the fund has enough money if all points get cashed in. Of course the VIP experiences also cost the hotels money.

The Starwood program is unique in that they have an online auction system that lets members to bid for experiences in online auctions. It's a pretty clever gimmick since it combines the "something for nothing" feeling of redeeming points along with the competitive thrill of online bidding. These types of experience trips also may help lure the traveler who earns his points on business travel into spending his points and his vacation time with the same hotel chain.

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Tags: busines travel, hilton, hotels, marriott, points, rewards programs, starwood, travel

JW Mariott Grand Rapids Set To Open

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels

The Detroit Free Press has an interesting article on the JW Marriott Grand Rapids, a $100 million, 24-story luxury hotel set to open this week. The hotel has 337 rooms including the Founders Suite which rents for $2,500 a night. it is hoped that the new hotel will help the city compete for convention and meetings business. The Free Press resorts that the hotel had orginally planned to turn the 19th floor into a women-only enclave. The idea was shelved after criticism and the 19th floor rooms which include amenities such as a shaving stool in the bathtub for legs, ionic hair dryers and soft chenille bedspreads will now be open to both sexes. All rooms include a Steelcase office chair and a technology pack so that the 37-inch flat screen TV in the room can be used as a computer monitor or gaming screen.

The main theme of the hotel relates the the five cities of Grand Rapids: Omihachiman, Japan; Perugia, Italy; Bielsko-Biala, Poland; Ga District, Ghana, and Zapopan, Mexico. The rooms and public areas feature photographic images of these cities as well as artwork created by artists from these cities. The Mixology lounge on the 23rd floor which will feature an iPod DJ some nights and the Six One Six restaurant offers gourmet fare. Other amenities include a fitness facility with a heated pool, a helipad,a ballroom, board rooms and a business center. Rooms start at $229 per night with rooms on the concierge floors going for $40 to $50 more.

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Tags: grand rapids, hotel, luxury hotel, marriott, michigan

Marriott Opens Vacation Club In St. Kitts

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels

The Marriott Vacation Club has opened a new resort in the scenic location of St. Kitts in the West Indies. The vacation ownership resort currently has 22 two- and three-bedroom villas, and will ultimately be home to 88 villas. The villas are in three-story garden houses and each villa has a full kitchen, LCD televisions and washer/dryers. The vacation club shares amenities with the St. Kitt's Resort and the Royal Beach Casino which means that golf, gambling, multiple restaurants and several pools are at your disposal. Prices starts at $17,500 per deeded week.

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Tags: marriott, st. kitts, travel, vacation, vacation club, west indies

The Ultimate Las Vegas Mancation

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Travel & Hotels

Mancation, baby! How much do you love your guy friends? Enough to spend nearly $50,000 with them in Vegas? The JW Marriot Las Vegas Resort in Summerlin, Nevada has come up with what they call the ultimate mancation. The four-day trip includes $1,000 per person in gaming chips, two oversized two-bedroom suites, the chance to drive a Ferrari 360 Spider, a day at a race track, a day at the golf course with lessons from the pros and spa treatments for all your metrosexual manscaping needds and to top it all off, a seven-course meal on the last night of your stay. Each man also gets to take home a new set of golf clubs worth $2,000 per person. The entire package costs $49,000. Sounds like the the sort of thing Kid Rock needs to help him get over his divorce.

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Tags: las vegas, LasVegas, mancation, marriott, nevada, travel, vacation

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