Starwood Preferred Guest launched a new feature last week for member discounts of 10% to 20% at more than 500 participating Starwood Hotel restaurants and bars globally. Starwood Hotels has offered Starpoints for hotel dining spend the past several years, even when not a registered hotel guest.
Link: Starwood Restaurants and Bars Read More…
Lake Las Vegas, about 20 miles from the Las Vegas Strip outside the suburb of Henderson, Nevada has a new Starwood Resort today with The Westin Lake Las Vegas Resort & Spa.
The hotel has actually been around since 1999, first as the Hyatt Regency Lake Las Vegas Resort. Since 2006 the property has been the Loews Lake Las Vegas Resort.
The Westin Lake Las Vegas enters SPG as a category 3 hotel.
Rates tonight are $179. There is a grand opening special stating rates from $125, but I did not see any rates lower than $161 for dates I checked in April and May. I didn’t find any availability for $125 per night before June 1.
I expect some good deals that will be significantly lower than $179 after the initial rebranding launch. Cash & Points stays at $45 and 2,800 points are also a good option, but again no availability today until June.
Lake Las Vegas: a man-made resort folly.
The economic recession that has resulted in 1 out of every 9 homes in Las Vegas in foreclosure also impacted the region’s hotels. The Ritz-Carlton Lake Las Vegas went bankrupt, closed down in May 2010 and reopened February 2011 as Ravella at Lake Las Vegas, a Dolce conference center resort.
Loews Lake Las Vegas defaulted on a $117 million mortgage in 2009 and was placed in receivership. Pyramid Hotel Group has been managing the hotel since it defaulted and also manages the Westin Las Vegas Hotel, Casino & Spa since the previous owners turned over the keys last year in bankruptcy.
Westin Las Vegas Hotel was seized by lenders after defaulting on a $160 million mortgage. I have to wonder if Starwood will drop Westin Las Vegas Hotel since it is generally not a highly rated hotel by SPG members. There are very few suites and I have never had anything more than a standard size room in several stays. The hotel is a couple blocks off the strip and kind of a letdown when there are so many great values in the major casino hotels for the same rate as the Westin.
I really enjoy the family environment around Lake Las Vegas and the Ravella property and now the Westin Lake Las Vegas. I think this is a great addition for Starwood Hotels.
Here is a Loyalty Traveler post from August 2009 on Loews Lake Las Vegas Resort. I also did a piece on Ravella Lake Las Vegas in June 2011 when there was a $59 rate. This piece has links to two other posts with photos of the former Ritz-Carlton property.
Las Vegas Sun (March 28) -
Loews hotel at Lake Las Vegas switching to Westin brand.
Starwood Hotels in Asia-Pacific have a special Upgrade Offer rate for $20 at more than 150 hotels for stays through December 31, 2012. These rates must be booked by March 31, 2012.
The $20 upgrade rate is based on upgrade to Club Room, but hotels I checked show a variety of upgraded rooms available for Upgrade Offer rate discount. The promotion terms state these rates are prepaid and nonrefundable, yet the terms for one hotel I checked, Westin Melbourne, show a cancel by date with no penalty. Read More…
Starwood Hotels has a bonus offer of 1,000 points per stay at 28 renovated hotels in the USA and Canada from March 20 – June 30, 2012.
This bonus may be earned multiple times at the same property or different properties for each eligible stay. Promotion FAQ.
SPG Renovations Worth Celebrating Promotion registration link. Registration by June 15, 2012 is required for this offer.
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Starwood’s Element extended stay hotel brand has a TravelZoo special offer rate of $89 per night for a studio suite for stays from April 1 through September 15, 2012. Reservations must be booked between March 21 and April 6.
All hotels showed $89 rates for most dates I checked, except for Element New York Times Square West where the lowest rate I found was $199. There might be lower rates for New York, but I didn’t see any rates lower than $199 after trying several dates.
This is a prepaid, nonrefundable rate that does not allow reservation changes. The terms of this sale state bookings can only be made online and I thought it needed to be through a specific website link, but the rate appeared automatically when I checked Element hotels on SPG.com.
Participating Element Hotels
Element Denver Park Meadows, Lone Tree, Colorado
Element Miami International Airport, Miami, Florida
Element Arundel Mills, Hanover, Maryland
Element Lexington, Lexington, Massachusetts
Element Omaha Midtown Crossing, Omaha, Nebraska
Element Las Vegas Summerlin, Las Vegas, Nevada
Element Ewing Princeton, Ewing, New Jersey
Element New York Times Square West, New York, New York
Element Houston Vintage Park, Houston, Texas
Element Dallas Fort Worth Airport North, Irving, Texas
Element Hotels Special Offer Rate terms & Conditions.
Bottom line is this rate is a great deal for many of these hotels. I stayed in Denver Park meadows last July for $71 so not all locations will be a significant bargain.
Element Hotels are a cookie-cutter design. The two rooms I had at two different hotels look exactly the same in my room photos. They are nice rooms with energy efficient design. The concept is green living in an extended stay hotel. Breakfast is complimentary.
Here is a Loyalty Traveler detailed review from 2009 of the Element Las Vegas Summerlin.
Shout out to LoyaltyLobby.com where I learned of this sale. I highly recommend this blog as one of my favorites.
SPG posted a link to a pdf list of Starwood Hotels changing category for 2012 on February 16, 2012 on this FlyerTalk thread with changes taking effect on March 1. Turns out that several hotels listed on the originally published list from Starwood Hotels did not actually change category, mostly hotels that were listed as going down, and some hotels not listed went up in category. The pdf list that is currently accessed through this link is different from the initial Feb 16 file. There are still inaccurate hotel category changes on the list today.
Here are a few of the hotels originally listed that did not change category and some new hotels that did change category since the February 16 list was published.
The hotels listed here are the discrepancies between the February 16 list of SPG hotel category changes and the March 16, 2012 list of SPG hotel category changes. At least two hotels are still listed with the incorrect category level on the SPG March 16 list with Le Centre Sheraton Montreal and Le Meridien Chiang Mai. There may be more changes, but without an accurate list from SPG those changes will be hard to detect.
This really is a regular occurrence with SPG annual category reassignments. I have written articles over the past few years and been burned by reporting SPG category changes for Hotel Gritti Palace, The Pulitzer in Amsterdam and Prince de Galles, Paris that didn’t happen after the original SPG list was published.
I want Starwood to continue publishing the annual changes, but keep in mind next February 2013 that the initial published list of Starwood Hotel category changes is not set in stone.
Le Centre Sheraton Montreal Hotel shown as dropping from Category 4 to 3 in pdf list online March 16.
This hotel actually increased and is listed on the Sheraton Montreal website today as SPG category 5.
Sheraton Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal) is celebrating 40 years with a special 40EUR rate available for a maximum 2 nights per stay. Four Deluxe category rooms (the hotel’s basic category) are set aside for each day of 2012. This rate is prepaid and nonrefundable. Use it as booked or lose your payment. The rate includes tax so comes out to US$52.66 at today’s rate of exchange for this SPG Category 4 hotel.
Sheraton Lisboa hotel website link. Read More…
I sandwiched my stay at Atlantis three weeks ago with hotel stays at Sheraton Nassau Cable Beach Resort. I stayed on Cash & Points for $60 and 4,000 points per night. That worked out to US$110 per night after tax and after adding the $40 daily resort fee. Starwood charges resort fees on award stays. Hyatt does not.
Published rates for my stay dates were $239 per night prepaid, nonrefundable or $269 AAA. 15% tax and $40 resort fee on top of that. At 4,000 points per night I was getting redemption value over $60 per 1,000 points.
Last week BoardingArea blogger VeryGoodPoints posted “Starwood’s Beat the Timer how did I not know about this!?!
I am asking myself the same question?
You definitely need to know about Starwood’s Beat the Timer site if you are a Starwood Hotels fan and want discount rate options for hotels in Europe.
This post shows a rate analysis for three hotels selected today from Starwood’s Beat the Timer site for discount rates in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
The long anticipated W Paris-Opera is finally open. There is a 75 second video on the hotel’s website visualizing “New York Energy Meets the Lights of Paris”.
W Paris-Opera is a small hotel at 91 rooms including 20 suites and 2 Extreme WOW Suites.
Here is a description of the hotel building from a BusinessWire article:
the hotel is set inside a historic 1870s Haussman-era heritage building near Opera Garnier, Galeries Lafayette and Place Vendome in the eclectic, historic 9th Arrondissement in Paris.
“Haussman-era” had no meaning to me when I woke up this morning. 19th century Paris has a setting in my memory of artists whose work I’ve seen in museums and pop culture. Turns out that I now realize I was fully immersed in the Haussman-era experience of Paris architecture on the times I have walked the long boulevards of central Paris. Those times when I wandered and wondered if the street of unbroken building fronts would ever end and give me the option of turning to the left or right. Haussman was the lead city architect who transformed Paris from a medieval city of alleys into a city designed for modern transportation with long straight avenues into the city center and the improvements in sanitary conditions suitable for urban living in the middle of the 19th century. This is an informative Wikipedia read on Haussman’s Renovation of Paris.
But back to the hotel and the hype of press releases for the W Paris-Opera:
Designed jointly by W Global Brand Design and the award-winning Rockwell Group Europe, W Paris – Opera was conceptualised to create a dynamic dialogue between the building’s historic facade, Paris as the “City of Light” and W Hotels’ DNA by infusing New York’s dynamism and never-ending energy into the quintessentially sophisticated Parisian neighbourhood.
W Paris-Opera jumps into the SPG Hotel Reward Category 7 at 30,000 points per night and 35,000 points in peak season dates. Currently there are no peak season dates listed for this hotel on the SPG website.
Starwood in Paris Rate Analysis for a 5-night stay April 15-20, 2012
Paris is one of the most expensive cities in the world for city center brand name hotels.
Starwood Hotels has Prince de Galles, Paris as a Luxury Collection member and that hotel is closed for remodeling most of 2012.
Westin Paris Vendome and W Paris-Opera and Le Meridien Etoile are three options for Starwood Hotels.
W Paris-Opera Category 7 at 30,000 points per night. 120,000 points (5th night free award) or 365 EUR/night for a prepaid, nonrefundable rate = US$482/night. Best Available refundable rate at 480 EUR per night = US$633.48/night.
W Paris-Opera redemption value = US$20.08 per 1,000 points using prepaid rate. US$26.40 per 1,000 points redemption value using BAR rate.
Westin Vendome Category 6 at 20,000 points per night. 364 EUR/night = US$480/night.
Westin Vendome redemption value = $30.00 per 1,000 points.
Le Meridien Etoile Category 5 at 12,000 points per night. 196 EUR/night = US$259/night.
Le Meridien Etoile redemption value = $26.98 per 1,000 points.
W Paris-Opera Rooms
W Paris-Opera is a hotel where Platinum elite status will definitely pay back some dividends with a potential upgrade and free breakfast.
The standard size “Wonderful” room is a small 226-269 sq. ft. The 365 EUR rate shown in the analysis above is the 20% discount rate for a prepaid, nonrefundable Wonderful size room with a King Bed and a rainshower head.
The next category is the Spectacular Room which sounds like mostly the same room design and size with the Opera House view. The rate rises to 445 EUR for the advance purchase prepaid nonrefundable rate or 580 EUR for BAR rate.
The Marvelous Suite at W Paris-Opera is listed at 344 sq. ft. This is actually about the average size of a typical upper upscale standard hotel room. W Hotels are clever at loading a surprising amount of functionality in a small space. The size of the Marvelous Suite probably seems much larger than the actual space allocated for the room. I teased the W San Francisco back in 2009 for a room their website claimed to be 400 sq. ft. but my tape measure couldn’t account for much more than 300 square feet of room space.
April 15-20, 2012 room rate for a Marvelous Suite is 605 EUR prepaid, nonrefundable (US$799/night) or 780 EUR BAR rate ($1,030/night).
805 EUR (US$1,063) includes breakfast which is certainly a deal for an extra 15 EUR per night. I mean the breakfast addition is a good deal compared to the BAR room rate. $1,000 per night tiny suite is certainly well beyond my financial means for travel. I wonder if those new SPG Suite upgrades can get a member into the Marvelous Suite. I bet they can!
Should I go on with the higher room categories at W Paris-Opera?
Fabulous Room – King Bed: 420 –450 square feet. Now this is a comfortable size room. 896 EUR prepaid (US$1,182) /1,150 EUR BAR ($1,517/night) April 15-20, 2012.
WOW Suite – King Bed: 484-635 square feet. 1,306 EUR ($1,723/night)prepaid/1,660 EUR BAR ($2,190/night).
Extreme WOW Suite – King Bed: 947 square feet. 1,946 EUR (US$2,568/night) prepaid or 2,460 EUR BAR ($3,246/night).
There is a W Paris-Opera hotel page with special offer rates for 4th night free, two free nights on a 6-night stay and 30% off BAR room rates for bookings made by March 31.
Pinch me now. I am still dreaming.
Links: Starwood site for W Paris-Opera
W Paris-Opera hotel site.
