Comments on: Starwood Preferred Guest’s Stealth Devaluation

By: Starwood Award Category Followup: A Conversation with Chris Holdren, Senior VP for Starwood Preferred Guest - View from the Wing

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:23:39 +0000

[...] reached out to me after my post on SPG’s decision not to adjust hotel categories for 2010 — which I called a [...]

By: Joshua Katt

Joshua Katt — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 04:22:26 +0000

Its all funny money with no rules, regulation or common sense to dictate what happens except for voting with your feet when a program decides to devalue. Which is hard to do objectively while sucked into the game with huge personal balances.

This is Rule #1. Earn and burn immediately. But this is easier said then done.

Kudo’s to Gary for trying to sort this all out for us!

By: barbara de lollis

barbara de lollis — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:18:23 +0000

Gary, interesting piece on SPG’s decision. i refer to it in my post today on Hotel Check-In. here’s the link – bit.ly/bn8PEw
cheers,
Barbara
USA TODAY’s Hotel Check-In

By: Ric Garrido

Ric Garrido — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:19:18 +0000

Nothing on the internet ever dies.

You brought up an old comment of mine that has some inaccurate info. The Amsterdam Pulitzer never went to Category 6. I think maybe it was listed incorrectly when the SPG categories were initially published that year.

This happened with the Prince de Galles last year that was shown as a Cat 7 in the initial release then changed back to Cat 6.

The Pulitzer has been a Category 5 for several years I think. So the increase from 7,000 points to 12,000 is about 71%, not 300%. (I should have put 200 to 250% anyway. math error)

The Westin Sukhumvit should state 200% increase, not 300%.

I also use to confuse my algebra students sometimes when working on the board and making elementary school mistakes in my past life.

By: Starwood pisses on its customers, tells them it’s raining | Upgrade: Travel Better

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 04:22:36 +0000

[...] write a scathing post about Starwood Preferred Guest’s point levels for the coming year, but Gary Leff has beaten me to it. I’ll just add to the [...]

By: iahphx

iahphx — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:30:56 +0000

I hate to sound cynical, but did you really believe a hotel program would index to a “deflation”? We all know that the number of points for redemption only goes one way — up.

We can only hope that, as hotel rates improve a bit this year, they don’t use it as an excuse to devalue next year. Maybe we’ve bought a year or two of breathing room.

By: Quasiconvexity

Quasiconvexity — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:03:33 +0000

Amen!