Maldives Wedding Bell Blues, Ireland’s (formerly the Hilton) Limerick Hotel Brothel Bust and St. Regis Mexico City $20 Mistake Rate

Maldives Wedding Bell Blues

This story just makes me sad. Anyone who has traveled to a region where the people speak a language you don’t understand has likely had the feeling of being the fool. This unfortunate Swiss couple renewed their wedding vows with a local ceremony at the high-priced Vilu Reef Beach & Spa Resort, Maldives.

The wedding ceremony You Tube video with English subtitles has gone viral as the officiant of the ceremony mocks and insults the wedding couple in the local dialect Dhivehi. The amazing part to me is the number of other local people listening to the ceremony who stand by saying nothing.

The video is 9 minutes and includes subtitles in English for offensive language by the officiant. Without subtitles you would not have a clue that anything is out of the ordinary. The story even made it to Huffington Post yesterday.

I imagine the officiant of the ceremony will spend time in jail. There could be a backlash effect for Maldives tourism. The President of the country even addressed the issue of the YouTube video in his weekly radio address.

The Vilu Reef Maldives Resort itself receives great reviews on TripAdvisor and these are reviews posted before the story broke. Rates currently posted for 2011 start at US$230 per night for a Garden Villa and $950 per night for the Presidential Water Suite accommodating four people.

Hotel in Limerick Brothel Bust (IrishCentral.com October 23, 2010 story)

The IrishCentral.com story from October 23, 2010 states this incident happened at the Hilton Limerick, however, this property went independent as the Strand Hotel Limerick in September 2008 and has actually not been associated with Hilton Hotels in over two years.

Delving into this story a little deeper I find the actual brothel event occurred in July 2008. So why is there a confusing IrishCentral.com story with 16 comments from the past week?

Bad reporting.

The truly fascinating discovery I made with this brothel story is a paper discussing the rationale for why the Strand Hotel Limerick decided Hilton branding was not in its best interest in the decision to go as a hotel independent in Limerick, Ireland. Local branding seemed more relevant to this hotel than global name recognition. The removal of the Hilton brand occurred just two months after this brothel story broke in July 2008.

Strand Hotel Limerick website.

St. Regis Mexico City $20 Mistake Rate

October 22 at 4:22 PST (California Time), there was a post on FlyerTalk for $20 per night room rates at the St. Regis Mexico City. Dates throughout 2011 were available at the $20 room rate.

This hotel normally publishes rates in the $300 to $400 per night range.

In less than two hours this deal was gone and the rate mistake was fixed. Who knows how many hundreds of nights were booked?

The $20 rate switched to minimum rates around $379 per night.

The St. Regis responded to the lucky $20 guests with an email later that day. The hotel agreed to honor one night at $20 (+19% tax), but additional nights would be $189 per night plus 19% tax. Potential guests were given until October 27 to accept or reject the offer.

Starwood Lurker even clarified the issue with a statement that the St. Regis would honor the first night at $20 and additional nights at $189 in the Grand Deluxe room category  originally booked with breakfast included at the hotel restaurant.

Quite a reasonable outcome. I missed this deal by about 30 minutes.

A prize of 100,000 Starpoints will be awarded to two SPG members who download the Blackberry application between August 1 and September 30, 2010. Members receive one entry for downloading the Blackberry app at http://www.spg.com/BBapp. Only one entry is accepted per member for this sweepstakes. Drawing will be October 15.

TO ENTER: 

A. Mobile: Visit BlackBerry App WorldTM at www.spg.com/BBapp, download the SPG app for BlackBerry and log in to the app with your SPG.com username and passcode during the Promotion Period to receive one (1) free entry. While members may log in to the app numerous times during the Promotion Period, each member will only receive one (1) entry into the Sweepstakes.

B. Mail: To enter by mail, hand print your name, address, day and evening phone numbers, e-mail address (if any), SPG number, and age on a 3″ x 5″ piece of paper. Mail it in a hand-addressed envelope to SPG App for BlackBerry Sweepstakes, P.O. Box 3010, Rogers, MN 55374-3011. Mail-in entries must be postmarked no later than September 30, 2010 and received by October 5, 2010. Limit one (1) entry per person.

This sweepstakes is open to legal residents in 15 countries. 

ELIGIBILITY: SPG® App for BlackBerry® Sweepstakes (the “Sweepstakes”) is open only to legal residents of the fifty (50) United States (including the District of Columbia), Canada (excluding Quebec), United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland, Germany, France, Italy, Czech Republic, South Africa, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand, who are at a minimum 18 years of age or older and have reached the age of majority in their respective jurisdictions at the time of entry. 

SPG Blackberry app sweepstakes Terms and Conditions

SPG Blackberry app features:

Members can browse and reserve stays at any of Starwood’s 1000+ hotels and resorts worldwide across nine brands: Sheraton®, Westin®, Le Méridien®, The Luxury Collection®, W®, Four Points by Sheraton®, St. Regis®, Element®, and Aloft®.

Key Features

• Access to SPG account, including Starpoints® balance, recent activity, stays needed to reach the next level and more.

• View upcoming stay information including map to hotel from your current location and call hotel directly from your BlackBerry.

• Search, book and view hotel information and photos for 1000+ hotels globally across nine brands.

• Access customer support around the globe.

• Browse TheLobby.com blogs to stay updated on the latest travel trends and insider information.

Related links: SPG Social Media Feed – stay connected with SPG on Twitter, Facebook, the Lobby, SPG Insider, FlyerTalk and mobile apps on one page.

After two long days at BlogWorld09 I just needed to chill out this morning with some easy reading and photo viewing. Easy reading led me to the Barbara De Lollis Hotel Check-In blog at USA Today from October 12, Exclusive: Starwood’s loyalty program launches Twitter, Facebook strategies. 

Interesting statistic from article is SPG members who have blogs are 80% more likely to book a Starwood Hotel than other members (time-frame please! Is the booking probability based on the next week, next month, this year, remainder of this life?)

The basic SPGTripShare process:

1.       Upload photos into your Facebook account. This was the time-consuming part since I didn’t have preloaded photos in my Facebook account. Each photo (4MB) took about 3 minutes to upload.

2.       Launch the SPG TripShare Facebook application: http://apps.facebook.com/spgtripshare/upload.php

3.       Upload up to 5 photos. I uploaded 5 pics from St. Regis Monarch Beach into the SPG TripShare app.

4.       Provide location and date of trip.

5.       Add some tags to describe the trip type. SPG TripShare has a set of tags to choose from or you can create your own.

6.       Submit your trip.

Here is my result: http://apps.facebook.com/spgtripshare/trip.php?id=225

Ric's SPG TripShare for St. Regis Monarch Beach

Just browsing through other trip photos was an interesting diversion for a Sunday morning. I find the Facebook page much more interesting than the Twitter feed from SPG.

SPG TripShare trip description tags

I am at BlogWorld Expo 2009 in Las Vegas. Yesterday at the keynote address of BWE09 a campaign started at 9am or so to send out the largest social media mass  message ever #beatcancer via Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

For every mention of the hashtag #beatcancer in a social media platform over 24 hours there will be a donation from eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors to cancer research. This is also a campaign approved by Guinness World Records for a world record entry as the largest social media mass message ever.

I remember those days in grade school back in the 1960s when I always had an annual edition of the Guinness Book of World Records and read the various entries. I actually haven’t seen the book in a number of years.

So if you ever wanted to be part of a world record there are still a couple of hours left to contribute your share to the effort for the largest social media mass message ever –

#beatcancer.

Post on Twitter, post on Facebook, post a blog using #beatcancer to be part of the world record attempt.

Here is a blog post on the topic from another blogger with far more details:

http://www.pamil-visions.net/twitter-beatcancer/26918/

And I’m off to the Las Vegas Convention Center for a full Saturday session @BlogWorld2009.

#beatcancer

You know we can if we give it our concentrated effort.

BlogWorld New Media Expo 2009, Las Vegas Convention Center

 October 24, 2009 Update:

#BeatCancer set the Guinness World Record with 209,771 total mentions on Twitter, Facebook, and blog posts.

http://www.pitchengine.com/free-release.php?id=30001

I have been looking over some social communities sponsored by hotel chain’s for their loyal members. As a long time member of FlyerTalk, I haven’t bothered to spend too much time in the hotel chain’s own social networks. It seems like information on most of the deals and hotel properties are discussed on FlyerTalk. A community of 200,000 travelers covers pretty much every topic.

So what is going on in the hotel-chain-managed social forums?

Priority Club Connect

InterContinental Hotels Group social community forum Priority Club Connect has several employee moderators and several active members. I received a personalized reply from Jenni shortly after registering for the site.

While the information on Priority Club Connect may not be as pervasive as using FlyerTalk, I did find one major advantage to hanging out in the Priority Club Connect forum.

30 Free Nights over 30 Days Exclusive Promotion Offer through Priority Club Connect

(30 Free Nights promotion link)

Priority Club Connect is giving one free night away from July 15 thru August 13 and a grand prize of 7 free nights to be awarded around July 17.

Simply register for the Priority Club Biggest Free Nights Offer (or Double Points Offer) and then submit a reply to where you want to spend a free night.

Restrictions: Promotion only available to US residents, but residents of Florida are ineligible.

( You aren’t American enough in Florida?)

Free nights are not eligible for hotel stays in Japan.

The free nights promotion seems to be a good strategy for publicizing Priority Club Connect.

I am doing my part here on Loyalty Traveler to help them grow the community. Although, more contestants reduces my odds of winning a free night.

Brief notes on the other hotel chain social forums:

MarriottRewardsInsider seems to have several active discussions going on with nearly 3,000 posts on a variety of topics. There were forums with recent posts, questions and replies, and some Marriott Official posts with program information and promotions. A member can sign in and jump right into the conversation with information, advice, and questions for cities and particular hotels and transportation options.

Starwood has TheLobby, but the last SPG member post in SPG Member’s Corner was from October 2008. The social forum aspect seems entirely absent from the site. I didn’t spend much time in TheLobby because the website seems to be an advertising extension of Starwood rather than a community forum for loyal SPG members.

Hyatt Hotels’ travel community is called Yatt’it. Browsing through posted tips reveals the Hyatt Concierges do most of the meaningful posting and even those tidbits of information are scarce. There is relatively little activity happening here.

Hilton Hotels was praised by Adam Kirby of Hotels Magazine in his blog last week for its customer engagement strategy on Twitter. I made a Hilton comment yesterday and gained another 10 followers from Hilton employees. I did not find a Hilton Hotels social forum.

Hey Readers – Let me know if there is a social community around Hilton that I missed. And please share your thoughts on this trend of hotel chain managed social forums.