Priority Club Points & Cash Rewards have increased to $70 for 10,000 points from the previous $60 rate. This is a relatively minor 17% increase on the reward cost.

This post looks beyond the Points & Cash Reward nights to examine how Priority Club Reward Nights have increased by as much as 63% in the past six months using $7 per 1,000 points as the fair exchange rate for points.  Read More…

Radisson Big Night Giveaway II repeats a similar PR fiasco as Radisson Big Night Giveaway last November. Hotel loyalty programs and their PR reps want to create social media buzz about their offers prior to revealing the promotion’s full “official” details. Without full disclosure and transparency the buzz often stings.

Update May 19, 12 noon California time: Club Carlson has decided to change the terms of the Radisson, Country Inn and Park Inn promotions to allow reservations booked prior to May 15 for stays within the respective promotion periods to count for the bonus points. There were communications errors made last week regarding this term of the promotion and Club Carlson has rectified the error by changing the promotion terms to count existing reservations. This is a fine resolution to the issue. Thanks Club Carlson.   Read More…

Won’t you please come to Chicago?

And here I am in the JW Marriott Chicago checking out the hotel for a few days. This is a FAM trip, the travel industry term for media visits, where press gets hosted by the hotel, wined and dined.  Going beyond staying at a hotel to actually sharing the types of experiences you can have at a hotel provides more insight to these destinations. Read More…

Loyalty Traveler AmexStar 25,000 Starpoints sweepstakes sponsored by Starwood Preferred Guest American Express in conjunction with the April 2012 Tribeca Film Festival New York has a winner:

@adelantando

Here is what the lucky SPG member has to say,

As a new college graduate, vacation funds are very limited. However, with my husband traveling for work nearly every week, I soon learned how to parlay his reward programs into wonderful travel experiences. With the points and free night promotions offered last year through SPG, we were able to vacation for a week in Hawaii, a weekend in London and finally on 11/11/11 we spent a memorable day in Paris, ALL FOR FREE! No other hotel program has the properties that excite us and allow for us to get so much for our money, (when we actually pay, that is…) Although there have been promotions to possibly lure us into staying with other hotel chains, we are not interested in changing our loyalty from SPG.

Congratulations to @adelantando.

Remember that this Tribeca Film Festival giveaway was the first of six SPG Amex Star sweepstakes from Loyalty Traveler for the 2012 year.

Also keep in mind there are four other SPG Amex Star bloggers who also will be running sweepstakes in 2012. I listed three of these bloggers in my previous SPG Amex Star post.

You might want to check out One Mile at a Time to enter Lucky’s SPG American Express 25,000 Starpoints sweepstakes running through next week.

May 2012 promotions from Top Ten hotel loyalty programs:

Links to my Loyalty Traveler posts provide more detail and promotion analysis for each offer.

Most hotel loyalty promotions are two to four months in duration.

The easiest way to quickly see a list of all hotel loyalty promotions discussed on Loyalty Traveler is to check my Loyalty Traveler Facebook page. All Loyalty Traveler post links feed into Twitter and all my tweets feed into Loyalty Traveler Facebook.

Summer 2012 hotel loyalty promotions Read More…

Priority Club launches its summer 1,000 points per night, up to 20,000 points, for Facebook fans who register starting today, May 14, 2012. The promotion is still limited to 20,000 bonus points after 20 nights by September 3, 2012. The regular promotion registration with Priority Club does not begin until June 1 for this same offer. Facebook fans who register early can earn the bonus points or miles for the month of May. Everyone else will be offered the 20,000 bonus points promotion from June 1 – September 3, 2012. Read More…

This is the season of travel surveys.  Who is traveling this summer and where are they going? Travel surveys reveal some trends, some indicators and some insightful data about which destinations are attractive or not.  Declining popularity is an indicator I view as a sign hotel bargains are to be found.

One of the most relevant statistics to me is the American Express finding that 19% of summer travelers plan to use loyalty program points and miles for 2012 summer travel. This percentage was only 15% just one year ago. That is over 25% growth in the number of travelers planning to use loyalty programs in just the past year.  Read More…

A couple of weeks ago I stood outside on room balconies at the Hyatt Century Plaza, InterContinental Los Angeles and Beverly Hilton. Then I found myself at the Andaz West Hollywood, the hotel probably most famous for its Hyatt Riot House balconies, and I learn that the Andaz West Hollywood rooms over Sunset Boulevard are a little bit larger than the rooms on the hillside view of the hotel since the remodeled hotel enclosed the former balconies for its opening in 2009. Read More…

In March 2012 the Loews Lake Las Vegas rebranded as the Westin Lake Las Vegas.  Lake Las Vegas is outside the town of Henderson about 20 miles east of the Las Vegas Strip.

There is also Ravella at Lake Las Vegas, a Dolce Hotel, formerly the Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas and a small shopping and entertainment center with a casino at that part of the lake, a little over one mile from the Westin Resort.  Read More…

I like to talk up the place I live – the Monterey Peninsula of Central Coast California. This is another one of my posts that has nothing to do with hotels. This post does share some of the great attractions of coming to the Monterey area.

The Monterey Peninsula is a place with nearly 200 hotels in three fairly small towns in Carmel (pop. 4,000), Pacific Grove (15,000) and Monterey (28,000)where the total year-round population is less than 50,000 people. Seaside, Marina, Del Rey Oaks, Carmel Valley and Pebble Beach add to the surroundings to give the area a real population a bit over 100,000 people. Salinas is a city of nearly 150,000 people that you might think would encroach on the Monterey Peninsula. Despite over 200 years of development in this area of the California Central Coast, the Fort Ord National Monument, agricultural fields, and hills separate the Monterey Peninsula from the Salinas Valley and the rest of the world. Read More…