The weather was once again fabulous when I stayed in San Francisco this past weekend at the Hyatt Regency Embarcadero.  I had planned on going to San Francisco.  I had not planned on staying at the Hyatt Regency. 

I kept going back and forth on a Starwood stay at the Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf on their $149 Summer Value special or the Westin Market which dropped to $159 (the Summer Value special rate was higher at $169).  I currently have a Stays Count Double promotion offer from SPG.  Then, there was the Kimpton Hotels special offer for a free night after 3 stays and their hotels were as low as $109/night using the special offer rate.  I decided against Kimpton Hotels because technically the special offer rate at $109 for the Harbor Court Hotel should not be combinable with the free night after 3 stays promotion.

Then, the day before my hotel stay I receive a special offer email from Hyatt Hotels.  Apparently, they miss me so badly since I haven’t visited them for a while that they gave me an offer too good to refuse.  I reached Diamond elite status during my March Madness Tax Stimulus Hotel Hop around the San Francisco Bay area a few months ago.  The email was an offer for a free night at any Hyatt in the world if I completed a stay by late September. 

Why wait?

I booked the Hyatt Regency San Francisco at the Embarcadero a few hours before heading up to the City.  I asked my wife if we had to choose between a remodeled room without a balcony or an older room with a balcony, which one would she want?  She picked the balcony and it is good I asked because I would have gone for the upgraded room.  I wanted the opportunity to take better photos of that TV screen embedded in the bathroom mirror.

We received a balcony room with great views of the Bay and even a view of Coit Tower from the corner of the room.  The room was not the upgraded rooms, but it was located on the 15^th floor.  The remodeled rooms are on Floors 16 and 17 and since my wife did not know what she was missing, all was well.

The Regency Club was an experience like a cruise ship.  There seemed to always be a food service going on and the 360 degree views from the floor to ceiling glass windows at the top of the hotel provide one of the best scenic seats in the City.

The 5-8pm evening reception was called the Fisherman’s Wharf selection and featured a couple of kinds of baked fish, vegetables and salad.  Alcohol is self-service, but not complimentary.  Beer $3, Wine $4, cocktails $5 and the guest fills out a card and deposits it in a box for room charges.  We ate some of the food and headed out to meet people at the Starlight Room on top of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, a Kimpton Hotel (and $139/night). 

Back at the Hyatt Regency, we arrived just for the tail end of the 8-10pm dessert hours.  There were only a couple of guests present and the German chocolate cake had hardly been touched.  The cake melted in my mouth and I needed will power to stop at two slices.  My sister asked me if it was as good as our mother’s cakes.  I have to confess – yes.

The next morning I was up at the lounge at 7am and accessed the internet on one of the two computers in the Club.  The Regency Club has free wireless access for guests.  A couple of hours later we ate from the breakfast spread of bagels and breads, smoked salmon, fruits and cereals.

There were far too many noisy toddlers in the Regency Club to make breakfast relaxing.  Twenty minutes in the two massage chairs helped relieve the tension.  You can even check out an i-pod from the concierge for your time in the lounge.  And the morning sun was so bright.

In retrospect, I received a 1,000 point bonus for my stay as a Hyatt Diamond member gift, complimentary internet, three meals, a massage, and in a week or two I will have a free night credit for any Hyatt hotel in the world (actually, the  Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego and Hyatt Regency Paris Madeleine are excluded from the offer).

A Category 5 Hyatt property costs 18,000 points for a free night.  I hadn’t planned to stay at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco last weekend since so many wonderful hotel loyalty bonus offers are available at the moment, but Hyatt trumped them all with their targeted pay for one night and get one night free offer.

I had a wonderful hotel stay and earned the equivalent of nearly 20,000 points.  I have until the end of the year to redeem my free night.  And if plans for international travel or a high value redemption like New York City does not pan out, I can always go eight miles down the road and stay at the Hyatt Highlands Inn, a category 5 hotel in Carmel Highlands for my free night. 

Tomorrow, August 6, 2008, Wednesday, 12 noon Eastern Time

Be ready to apply for free golf tournament tickets at

https://www.spgpromos.com/pgatickets/.

There are ten pairs of passes available to the following tournaments:

THE BARCLAYS – Paramus, NJ;

Deutsche Bank Championship – Norton, MA;

BMW Championship – St. Louis, MO;

SAS Championship – Cary, NC;

THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola – Atlanta, GA;

Constellation Energy Senior Players Championship – Timonium, MD;

Valero Texas Open – San Antonio, TX;

Administaff Small Business Classic – The Woodlands, TX;

AT&T Championship – San Antonio, TX;

Charles Schwab Cup Championship – Sonoma, CA.

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has some of the best discount rate offers available for the online shopper.  Loyalty Traveler is a true fan of the frequently offered 2 Nights for the Price of 1 special rates; a frequent discount rate for hotels in Europe that can save you hundreds of dollars with one reservation. 

Another special rate is the prepaid (nonrefundable) 25% Off Weekend Bed and Breakfast stays in Europe and the Middle East.  This offer is valid through 2008 primarily for weekend stays on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, however, some locations may offer mid-week special rates.  Terms for this offer. 

My searches showed much lower nightly rates for the 2-for-1 special offer rate than with the 25% B&B link.

Holiday Inn Amsterdam, Netherlands,  Sep 19-21, 2008

79.50€/night or 159€ for the 2-night rate compared to

105€/night using the 25% off rate. 

Crowne Plaza – The City, London, UK,  Sep 19-21, 2008

£62.50 / night or £125.00 for 2-night stay using the Pay for 1, Get 2 nights special rate.

£113.00/night using the 25% off B&B rate. 

Priority Club Rewards 

The IHG hotel corporation loyalty program is Priority Club Rewards.  Priority Club was recognized for best award redemption for hotel loyalty programs in the Americas at the 2008 Freddies Awards.  The PointBreaks free nights for 5,000 points per night are one of the highest value hotel opportunities around.  Crowne Plaza free nights at 25,000 points regardless of location makes these hotels one of the best values for a free night in many cities when compared to the redemption rate for a comparable hotel in another loyalty program.  InterContinental Hotels are among the premier hotels for the region in many of their locations and the 30,000 points to 40,000 points per night are highly competitive with the redemption rates for comparable hotels in other programs.

About InterContinental Hotels Group

A hotel chain as large as the InterContinental Hotels Group makes Priority Club Rewards a valuable loyalty program investment for some travelers.  The Holiday Inn Express brand (1,700 Hotels) of IHG far surpasses in numbers and locations the entire Starwood Hotels group (about 800 hotels) and Hyatt Hotels group (fewer than 500 hotels).  Priority Club is one to rival Hilton and Marriott for road warriors.  InterContinental Hotels (about 150 hotels) and Crowne Plaza (about 300 hotels) are upscale redemption opportunities and offer a higher level of service than your typical Holiday Inn (1,400 hotels).  IHG’s new brand Hotel Indigo is still limited to a few markets with only 14 properties opened since launching in 2004.  Candlewood Suites (150 hotels) and Staybridge Suites (125 hotels) offer extended stay apartment style lodging.  IHG is a leading player in all market segments of the hotel industry.

Priority Club Fall 2008 Promotion for Double Points or Double Miles

Later this week I will write about the upcoming IHG Priority Club Rewards promotion for Double Points or Double Miles.  Registration is required.  The promotion starts September 15, 2008 and runs to December 15, 2008.

Learn more now, if you can’t wait for my post.

Starwood’s Summer Value hotel rates sale didn’t go off smoothly last week.  There were numerous examples of rates available at many hotels lower than the Summer Value sale offer.  Another quirk was the fact that the timer on the screen counting down the days and hours before the sale ended ran down to the final hour last evening while the fine print at the bottom of the Promotion Offer Page stated the sale ended at 11:59pm EDT on August 5, 2008 which is tonight.

Terms:

·         Reservations are prepaid, non-refundable and non-changeable.

·         Book by 11:59pm EDT on Monday, August 11, 2008 for stays by September 30, 2008.

·         Thursday, Friday, or Saturday arrival necessary for discount rates.  Some hotels may have minimum stay requirement.  (Terms do not mention Sunday, and the previous Summer Value sale included low room rates for Sunday.)

Starwood has extended the sale for another week and the terms and calendar are now aligned.  This is Day 1 of the 7-day sale and the sale ends at 11:59pm EDT on August 11, 2008.

My observation from dozens of searches is the sale fares show up during regular default searches on the Starwood Preferred Guest booking sites and there is no need to follow the promotional offer link above to get the lower rates. 

Bookings are non-refundable and non-changeable so make sure your plans are firm before booking.

My observation was several hotels in the San Francisco Bay Area had their lowest rates since 2006 with this offer.  W Silicon Valley ($87), Sheraton Palo Alto ($99), and Sheraton Fisherman’s Wharf ($149 is a bargain for high season August and September.  Winter can be $129.) These rates are in the region of low off-season winter rates.

Other hotels like the W Hotel San Francisco, The Palace, and Le Meridien San Francisco have been $20 to $100 cheaper at times in 2008.

Bargains are there, but you have to look carefully.

HHonors will revert back to calendar year elite qualification and end rolling 12-month qualification as of January 1, 2009.  Members who reach an elite level in 2008 will maintain that status until March 31, 2010.  The membership year will now end in the month of March rather than April as had been the rule.   

Elite Membership Year:  Qualify for a membership level in 2008 and your elite status level will remain effective through March 31, 2010.

The new membership year is a change from the prior membership year rules which allowed a member reaching an elite level in one calendar year to maintain that membership level through the month of April (HHonors member attaining Diamond elite in 2007 holds that level through April 2009).

HHonors has always done things just a little differently. 

·         HHonors is the only program that qualifies hotel stays using points towards frequent guest elite status activity.

·         HHonors requires a 6-night stay or longer to get the points reduction on multiple night hotel stay awards.

·         HHonors almost exclusively targets bonus points promotions tailored to specific members rather than recruiting frequent guests from the masses with open registration for high value promotions.  This targeted marketing strategy comes from the hotel program that used to give away thousands of points a year just for updating your guest profile online every quarter.

HHonors introduced “Rolling Tier” elite qualification in the beginning of 2005. 

HHonors has been the only major hotel loyalty program in the past few years to offer elite qualification on a 12-month rolling tier model where any 12-month period could be used for qualification.

Advantage of Rolling-Tier Elite Qualification

Even HHonors diamond members struggled to understand how HHonors rolling tier was calculated.  There is a 92-page thread on FlyerTalkto attest to the confusing aspects of the Hilton HHonors rolling tier elite qualifying method. 

In my opinion, rolling tier elite qualification was primarily a benefit for a frequent traveler who may have finished one calendar year (assume 2007) short of desired elite status. 

Let’s say the traveler started a new job in June 2007 and made 20 Hilton stays by December 31^st, 2007.  The member stayed enough to qualify for mid-level elite membership as HHonors Gold member after 16 stays, but the real benefits of hotel frequent guest program high-elite membership come with top-tier elite membership. The frequent guest needed 28 stays, 60 nights, or $10,000 of eligible hotel spending to reach 100,000 base points and qualify for HHonors Diamond elite membership.

Under most hotel loyalty programs (Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, Starwood) the member would have started January 1, 2008 of the new calendar year with a cleared slate of 0 Stays and 0 Nights towards elite membership qualification. 

The HHonors member with 20 stays on December 31, 2007 had a much lower threshold for elite status qualification in 2008.  Only 8 more stays by June 2008 in the rolling tier qualification period was needed to reach top-tier Diamond elite membership in Hilton HHonors. 

A hotel frequent guest seeking top elite status in one of the major programs but without this status on December 31, 2007 had minimal incentive to stay with their particular loyalty program for 2008.  Each program requires about the same amount of hotel activity for earning top elite status and the member starts from scratch on January 1, 2008.  Rolling tier qualification should have been a competitive advantage for Hilton HHonors in maintaining loyalty for 2008.

Qualification Criteria for Top-Tier Elite Membership

(all these programs now base elite qualification on hotel activity for Jan 1- Dec 31 calendar year)

Hilton HHonors Diamond: 28 stays, 60 nights, or earning 100,000 base points.

Hyatt Gold Passport Diamond: 25 stays or 50 nights

InterContinental Hotels Group Priority Club Platinum: 50 nights or earn 60,000 points.

Marriott Rewards Platinum: 75 nights

Starwood Preferred Guest Platinum: 25 stays or 50 nights.

The transfer of loyalty to a different hotel frequent guest program becomes much more costly to the loyalty program member in terms of lost amenities and benefits once top-elite membership is attained in any hotel loyalty program. 

This is why most hotel loyalty programs will give a top-tier frequent guest in one program a complimentary status match to top-tier elite membership. 

And this is why the benefits and privileges of top-tier elite membership are usually generous as a means of keeping the high value frequent guest loyal to a particular hotel chain. 

Hilton HHonors has decided to eliminate rolling tier elite qualification, so apparently there was not ample competitive advantage with this hotel loyalty program feature.