Occasionally I have a list of hotel related news items I find interesting, yet never get around to writing an article on the topic. I call these pieces Elevator Talk. The idea is you can discuss this item during the time of an elevator ride.

Got Points? Get Stuff!

Hotelmarketing.com says hotel loyalty program members are spending 14% to 23% more points on merchandise redeemed with points this shopping season over last year through Hilton HHonors, InterContinental Hotels Group Priority Club Rewards, and Marriott Rewards.

Oyster.com suffering from East Coast algae bloom?

I love shellfish. Dungeness crab season is here this month in Monterey, CA and I have been ingesting my fair share of crustaceans as a local coastal resident. East Coast shellfish is on the “Do not Eat” hazard warning list at the moment. Apparently, red flag signals have also been raised by gawker.com for the hotel review site Oyster.com when it comes to financing the hungry molluscs on staff.  

Oyster.com provides a fairly comprehensive collection of hotel photos for properties in the limited locations the site has covered since launching in June 2009.   Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, and Boston are the US cities covered. Beach resorts of Hawaii, Dominican Republic, and Jamaica are other locations. A typical hotel review will include about 200 hotel photos taken by the reviewer and a write-up of hotels and best hotel lists in categories like Best Luxury, Best Business, Best Family hotel.

Apparently paying journalists to stay in a bunch of hotels in an expensive city with a nice camera and write an opinion of a hotel along with taking hundreds of photos posted on a website with no advertising revenue is not sustainable in an expanding business. A large portion of the company’s staff has been eliminated.

I have empathy with their troubles since I basically run a one man Oyster-style operation. My expenses are kept in check by not having a DSLR Nikon camera for my hotel passages.

Palace Hotel San Francisco Free 3-night Stay in the Presidential Suite Room 888

The Palace Hotel celebrated its 100 year birthday on December 15 with a key to the Presidential Suite attached to a bouquet of helium balloons allowed to drift away over the city. Find the golden key and you will receive a three night stay in the Presidential Suite, Room 888. This same stunt accompanied the opening of the rebuilt Palace Hotel on December 15, 2009, 42 months after the great San Francisco earthquake destroyed the 1875 property in the firestorm. San Francisco Chronicle story.

The Palace Hotel San Francisco, Room 888-Presidential Suite

Hyatt is just in time for 2010 World Cup

Hyatt Regency Oubaai Golf Resort & Spa opened in Herold’s Bay, George, South Africa. The resort features South Africa’s first Ernie Els designed golf course. The hotel location is on the Garden Route, an upscale beach resort location on the Western Cape between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth.

Hyatt Regency Oubaai website link

Hilton Sneak peek at the Q1 2010 promotion for free nights (Best HHonors promo in a long time)

HamptonInsider on FlyerTalk says HHonors will offer a free hotel night after every 4 stays or 10 nights from January 5through March 31, 2010. Free night is said to include all high category hotels. No further details yet.

HHonors has also just signed up with Virgin America as an airline partner. Earn 250 Elevate points per hotel stay or 50 Elevate points for Hampton Inn or Homewood Suites.

Marriott Rewards Insiders

Marriott Rewards has a social community forum Marriott Rewards Insiders. I find the site contains favorable user generated content. Along with Priority Club Connect,  I think these hotel social forums offer some valuable insight and tips on the hotel loyalty programs and hotel properties for members. Interacting with other members is more valuable to me than reading packaged content primarily from hotel staffers and SPG members selected by thelobby.com to be a core group of experts.

This is not a hotel industry article. You may want to avoid reading this piece due to its disturbing content on child abuse and sex tourism. This may not be the most appropriate way to promote Passports with Purpose fundraising efforts to build a school in Cambodia, but the sex tourism trade in Cambodia is something that I have been aware of for the past 16 years. You should be aware too.

Some travelers visit places like Cambodia, Costa Rica, Thailand, and Eastern Europe and have a great time sightseeing, hanging out with locals, and enjoying beaches, restaurants, and pubs. Other travelers are looking for a cheap prostitute vacation.

I’ve met sex tourists, mostly while staying at upscale hotels in places like Bangkok, Singapore, the Virgin Islands, and Guatemala. I have heard some stories in my travels I wish I hadn’t been told.

Passports with Purpose is working to build a school to educate children in rural Cambodia. My travels have never taken me to Cambodia, however, my background as a certified California public school teacher has taken me into dozens of schools around the USA and some schools in other parts of the world. Education doesn’t eliminate poverty, but at least it gives a person more tools to fight poverty. Education allows a person to envision the possibility of better life choices.

In 1993, I was working on my Masters in Labor Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. One of my research projects focused on child labor issues outside the U.S.A. My studies of international child labor laws evolved into case studies of working and living conditions for children in Cairo, Egypt working in the cotton dye trade; children in Bangladesh working in the textile trade, and children in Cambodia working in the sex trade.

It is still widely reported that one-third of prostitutes in Cambodia are girls under the age of 18.

Passports with Purpose

Passports with Purpose is raising money for a school in rural Cambodia. The potential for an educated girl to bring lifelong revenue to the family is a way to circumvent a girl living in an impoverished rural area of Cambodia being indentured to a sex trafficker. Education is a proactive alternative for children and families who are struggling with poverty.

Sex tourism is a dark side of global travel and when it involves children it touches evil. The issue is too often an unspoken evil. I am reluctant to bring it up since it is unpleasant and not a side of tourism or the hotel industry most people want to read or hear about when looking for travel information.

When traveling alone, a single man out and about around the world, I have been surprised at the number of times men in hotels discuss their prostitution sexcapades around me. 

Years ago while still in my twenties traveling with my wife, before we became teachers, I was sitting by the pool at a Caribbean island hotel when two guys told me their story describing in detail how they kept a 15 year old boy locked in a room as a sex slave for two weeks in Miami. I went back to my hotel room and ranted to Kelley. I didn’t do it then, but if that scenario were to happen around me today, I would be calling the cops from my hotel room.

As a teacher I am a mandated reporter of child abuse. A sexual encounter with a child is abuse. Observation of children is a key component of classroom teaching and some of my more severely impaired behavior students turned out to be child molestation victims.

How is a child supposed to function normally around other children and adults when childhood innocence has been shattered by the age of 10?

Why am I advocating you put your money into helping build a school in Cambodia when as a certified teacher I know we need money right here in the USA to build better schools?

“Every year it is also estimated that 5 million tourists run to Far East and Thailand for sex. They bring more than 25 billion dollars worth of cash to these countries. This is nearly 10 times more than the electronics export receipt of Thailand which is highly praised.”

Source: http://www.fisek.org/atlas_evaluation.php

The government in Cambodia supports “Child Safe Tourism” with hotel staffers who participate in preventing and reporting child labor violations including sex tourism involving children. Implementation of literacy programs is a key recommendation for tackling prostitution in key tourist areas of Cambodia. Being able to read and write is a skill most prostitutes in Cambodia lack and  “prerequisite to improve their livelihood options”.

Cambodia by the Numbers

I have been looking at numbers today. Here are some numbers from the U.S. Department of Labor on child labor in Cambodia from ten years ago. I find the numerical data along with my background in labor studies and education a compelling call for the urgency to build more rural schools in Cambodia now.

1999 Cambodia

24.1 % of children age 10-14 worked.

The percentage of girls as workers outpaced boys  by the age of 12.

65,000 children age 5-13 worked over 25 hours per week and did not attend school in a population of about 4,000,000 children.

2008 Cambodia

80% of the population in Cambodia is rural in a country population of about 14.5 million.

88% of girls and 92% of boys were in primary school in 2007. 85% of children complete primary school.

Only around one third of children were in secondary school in 2007, but this is more than double the rate of ten years ago.

Adult literacy rate has jumped dramatically over the past ten years from 63% to 76%. 86% of Cambodia’s youth are literate. Most European countries and the USA/Canada is 99%. Mexico is around 93%. Cambodia is on par with countries like Guatemala, Egypt, Jamaica, and Syria.

The number of children attending school has increased, but girls are underrepresented in schools in both urban and rural areas. One of the greatest changes in the education statistics is the closing of the literacy gap between males and females. Literate females are 20 percentage points behind males for all persons over 15, but only 7 percentage points behind males (90% literacy) at 83% literacy for 15 to 24 year olds.

By Cambodian government statistics, at least 1 in 6 children under the age of 15 is a worker and some NGO reports place this number as high as 44% of children work in Cambodia.

Help Build a School in Cambodia

A $10 contribution to Passports with Purpose will help build a new rural school in Cambodia in 2010.

Hyatt Gold Passport made a generous donation of 50,000 points as a raffle prize in the Passports with Purpose fundraiser running through Monday December 21. Your donation can make a difference in children’s lives and you just might win enough points to take a wonderful hotel vacation.

Sources on Cambodia Child Labor and Education

US Department of Labor – Child labor in Cambodia

UNESCO Education Statistics (2007)

UNESCO General Education Statistics

Somaly Mam Foundation is a non-profit organization to rescue, shelter, and rehabilitate women and girls from human trafficking in Southeast Asia, founded by Cambodian sexual slavery survivor Somaly Mam.

“If This Isn’t Slavery, What Is?” Nicholas Kristof, New York Times (Jan 3, 2009)

Loyalty Traveler : Win 50,000 Hyatt Gold Passport points through Passports with Purpose raffle (Dec 1, 2009)

Starwood Preferred Guest has published its 1^st quarter 2010 hotel loyalty promotion called “More Nights = More Rewards”.  The promotion title basically tells it all. Stays of one or two nights earn 2 bonus Starpoints per $1. Three night stays earn 4 bonus points per $1. Four night and longer stays earn 6 bonus points per $1. These bonus points are on top of base points and elite bonus points earned for stays.

My initial impression is this promotion is weak, unless you are a high spender or planning several 3+ night hotel stays during the promotional period.

The Offer:

Bonus is based on length of stay in consecutive nights at one individual hotel between January 5, 2010 and April 15, 2010.

1 or 2 night stays = Double Starpoints (total is 4 Starpoints/$1 for non-elites; 5 points per $1 elites)

3 night stay = Triple Starpoints (6 Starpoints non-elite; 7 Starpoints for Gold and Platinum elites)

4 or more nights = 4x Starpoints (8 Starpoints non-elite; 9 Starpoints for Gold and Platinum elites)

Registration is required between January 5 and March 31, 2010.

Registration link is not yet active. Promotion Information link is here.

850 properties are participating in this offer which means about 150 Starwood brand hotels are not participating in this offer. I looked through the Starwood hotel list, but I was unable to detect hotels missing from the list. You will need to check specifically for any hotel you are planning to visit.

Basically this is a promotion targeted for high spend and 3+ night frequent guest stays.

Spend $2,000 for a one-week beach vacation and you can be looking at 12,000 bonus points. Not a bad haul.

In comparison to the current 2009 Q4 promotion of 1,000 points per stay, to earn more than 1,000 bonus Starpoints requires your daily hotel charges to average in excess of:

• 1 night stay = $500+ @ 2 bonus points per $1

• 2 night stay = $250+ @ 2 bonus points per $1

• 3 night stay = $84+ @ 4 bonus points per $1

• 4 night stay = $42+ @ 6 bonus points per $1

This is a decent offer for persons planning longer multi-night stays. For this king of the one-night stand, this promotion has me looking elsewhere for greener pastures to graze for the winter months of 2010.

This promotion is combinable with other SPG promotions.

Perhaps there will be a replay of the 2009 Q1 “Night after Night” SPG promotion enhancement. Last winter SPG offered 500 bonus points per night and a 5,000 points bonus after 10 nights. Then, halfway through the four month promotion, SPG added an additional 500 points per night bonus. Members who stayed 10 nights during the first months of 2009 earned 1,500 bonus points per night.  

The “More Nights=More Rewards” rules state this 2010 first quarter promotion is combinable with other Starpoints promotions. I’m hoping to see some other good offers make this deal a little more valuable for those of us with a pattern of short in and out hotel stays.

Loyalty Traveler promotion rating = 2 Keys (a bonus value if you play, but not necessarily worth going out of your way.)

Deal Alert for new members of Starwood Preferred Guest:

If you have never been a member of Starwood Preferred Guest, I have the ability to refer you to the SPG program and you will receive instant Gold Elite membership through February 2011. SPG Gold membership normally requires 10 stays or 25 nights in a calendar year.

You will receive a promotional bonus of 1,000 points per night for stays through March 31, 2010.

This promotional offer requires that I submit your email address on a SPG Referral form and they will send you a new membership application by email. This offer is only valid for new members to SPG.

Send an email to me at ricgarridolt@gmail.com if you are interested in this referral offer.

Disclosure: I receive a one-time 1,000 bonus points reward if the referred member stays at least one night by March 31, 2010.

Related link: http://boardingarea.com/blogs/loyaltytraveler/2009/11/20/my-midas-touch-gives-new-spg-members-starwood-preferred-guest-gold-elite/

SPG 2010Q1 More Nights = More Rewards promotion