View from the Wing

Priority Club has a short survey about their program for 250 points. Survey runs through February 29, 2008. Every bit helps!

Priority Club offers ‘any hotel, anywhere’ as an award — you redeem your points for an Amex Gift Card for use on hotel purchases. These can be used to pay hotel bills anywhere you wish. The idea is that you aren’t limited to Priority Club hotels with your Priority Club points. The usual downside? You get less than half a cent in value per Priority Club point. Standard hotel redemptions offer far better return.

However, through December 15th, Priority Club is offering these ‘Any Hotel, Anywhere’ redemptions at half off. You can get better than 4/5th of a cent per point (double the value). This actually makes for a pretty good deal.

First, because you’re paying for your room instead of redeeming points. And that means whatever hotel you’re staying at should be earning you points.

Second, because Priority Club is iffy at best at offering elite benefits on award stays. So if you are spending ‘any hotel anywhere’ cards at a Priority Club property, you may experience better elite treatment than if you had booked an award.

Finally, since the reduction in value of Priority Club points (for instance, an Intercontinental property redemption went from 30,000 to 40,000 points per night), Priority Club points aren’t frequently worth more than 4/5ths of a cent anyway. In fact, the breakeven point between the top-level hotel gift card redemption and an Intercontinental room night redemption is a room rate of $332 — leaving points earning and flexibility aside.

For this reason I’m going to be snagging a bunch of these gift cards!

Turns out that the 5000 point award nights aren’t even a mistake.

I speculated that someone miscoded the hotel as participating in PointBreaks, since the number of points matched that offer but the hotel wasn’t in the list of participating properties (and would have been the most expensive hotel in the list, by far).

But it is a planned special offer:

Exclusive for Priority Club® members, stay at the new InterContinental Los Angeles Century City, March 15, 2007 through September 4, 2007, to receive triple points, triple miles or triple credit with any 2 night consecutive stay during this introductory period.



Plus, Priority Club members can take advantage of our very special Reward Night PointBreaks offer of only 5,000 points a night for stays from March 15 to May 15, 2007.

Sometime this morning Priority Club changed their redemption chart.

For example, some Holiday Inns jump from 15,000 points to 25,000 points. And some Intercontinentals go from 30,000 points to 40,000 points. The Boston, DC, Vienna, and Tahiti properties are notable among them. There’s no chart of changes by property, so I’ll just be piecing together which ones have changed.

Naturally, there’s a Flyertalk discussion and folks are none too pleased. Bumping the prices of some hotels by a third is bad enough. I understand it (there were some great values there, and great values don’t last). But it’s disappointing. However, making the changes without any notice whatsoever is criminal.

The Intercontinental Los Angeles Century City (formerly Park Hyatt) has award rooms available for just 5000 Priority Club points, and availability appears to stretch through May 16. Dates after that are pricing out at the usual 30,000 points per night.

Though Priority Club does sometimes discount award redemptions (eg 24,000 points instead of 30,000 points for an Intercontinental), this award price is unprecedented… likely an error, though I’m having a hard time figuring out what the keystroke mistake would have been. Perhaps someone mistakenly coded it as a PointBreaks property.

Frequently Priority Club awards are available for any room at a given hotel, including suites, and presumably this is an error on the hotel’s part. Discussion of the phenomenon can be found at Flyertalk’s suite redemption alert thread. These suite redemptions are generally honored — even the wonderful Jimbaran Suites and Imperial Villas at the Intercontinental Bali, when those were available.

Still, I suppose Priority Club might come back and ask for more points later for this booking during an audit (they frequently redeposit points into members’ accounts after award stays, but also sometimes catch the error and correct it months later). But this is different in kind — the advertised price is actually 5000 points! And they did honor the THB0.01 pirce at the Holiday Inn Phuket…

As always with such deals, your mileage may vary.

This has been out for a few months but it’s my absolute favorite commercial, I can watch it over and over and still laugh. But I’m weird.

It’s a great spot on points, but never really tells you why Priority Club is a good program or even how to join. What action are you supposed to take from this commercial? (I guess you’re supposed to ‘look again’ at Holiday Inn because you can earn points?) But it’s sheer brilliance nonetheless.

Since the hotel’s opening, the Intercontinental Thalasso on Bora Bora has shown no award availability.

As reported on Flyertalk, they’ve finally loaded their award inventory — and apparently accidentally made all room types bookable as awards.

Priority Club has a fairly anachronistic award structure. Most hotels of a given brand come at the same cost. Intercontinental hotels cost 30,000 points a night (unless they’re an all-inclusive property, in which case it’s 40,000 points). So the two Intercontinentals in Cleveland, which can sometimes be had for as little as $99, cost the same number of points on an award as the Intercontinentals in French Polynesia. The $900+ a night Overwater Diamond Bungalows are currently redeemable for 30,000 points…

100 SQM OVERWATER VILLA FACING THE MAIN ISLAND OF BORA BORAVIEW OF OTEMANU MOUNTAIN TERRACE SUN DECK GLASS BOTTOM TABLE SEPARATE LIVING RM HIGH SPEED INTERNET 2 SOFA BEDS DIRECT DIAL PHONE 2 FLAT SCREEN TV DVD PLAYER MINIBAR ESPRESSO MACHINE CEILING FAN VILLA WITH 2 SGL BEDS AVAIL

Last month I reported on a rate glitch at the Holiday Inn Phuket — THB0.01 per night from May through October — and the rate was available for more or less a full day.

No one has been cancelled that I’m aware of, whether they booked at the Priority Club website, Travelocity, or elsewhere. The hotel did say at first that there was an error that they couldn’t honor, though they didn’t cancel reservations. Now, as reported by several Flyertalkers, the hotel has explicitly acknowledged that they will be honoring this “once-in a lifetime, special room rate.”

Priority Club (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Intercontinental, etc.) is probably worse than any other chain with respect to hotel properties complying with the terms and conditions of their loyalty program.

One specific area where this manifests itself is upgrades for elite members (Platinums can never really know what to expect at a Holiday Inn, and Royal Ambassador treatment varies markedly at all Intercontinentals — is there an upgrade at all? is it to an executive room or a suite or two room categories or…?).

But what bothers me most at the moment is their decision to award points and stay credit on any given rate. You just never know whether you’re going to earn points. And even if you think you should, reporting a discrepancy after the fact may or may not be met with favorable customer service.

One rule that seems to be applied sometimes is that you will not earn any points when booking a hotel rate that’s less than 30% of the ‘normal’ rate (whatever this is, it doesn’t seem to be rack) at a hotel. This rule that some hotels seem to use and some Priority Club customer service agents think exists is nowhere to be found in the program’s terms and conditions.

The only reference to 30% discounts and points earning is that points will be earned on conference rates or discounts negotiated directly with a hotel when the rate is discounted less than 30% (off what?).

This item in the terms and conditions does not apply to any other situation. Yet some hotels just refuse to pay for points to be awarded on other discounted rates, and Priority Club lets them get away with it. I imagine they just have poor enforcement mechanisms written into their hotel contracts, and don’t have a good way to make properties pay for points when they don’t wish to do so. And the program chooses not to eat the expense itself.

Points are also awarded inconsistently when Intercontinental Ambassador members use their ‘free weekend night’ certificates. You pay for one night (which should earn points and stay credit) and get the next night free. If the hotel chooses to ’spread the rate’ evenly across the two nights (which is incorrect) they then argue that the stay is discounted more than 30% and thus ineligible for points, even though the terms and conditions of the program doesn’t provide for this. An appeal to customer service will sometimes yield points, sometimes it will not.

What’s most outrageous is that there’s no way to know in advance, when booking a hotel, whether or not points and stay credit will be awarded. Apparently there’s no simple rule like at other chains that ‘all stays booked on the Priority Club website will earn points.’ Or that points will be earned unless the customer is advised otherwise, at least advised in the rate details. Shouldn’t they at least give customers the option to book a qualifying rate if not all rates will qualify?

This really is a backward program. It’s not as bad as Radisson’s Goldpoints, which I’ve found to be downright dishonest (I blame the company managing that program, which also manages Amtrak Guest Rewards). But it’s not a first-tier program by any stretch a la Marriott, Hilton, or Starwood.

If I wasn’t a Royal Ambassador member and entitled to complimentary drinks from the mini-bar I wouldn’t ever stay at an Intercontinental property, simply for this reason.

The Priority Club Visa is available through February 28 offering 30,000 points with first purchase and fee waived the first year.

Since it only offers one point per dollar spent it’s not a great place to put spending. The offer is three points per dollar at Priority Club hotel properties, however, and there’s a 10,000 point bonus for spending $15,000 on the card in a year.

Priority Club is offering 3000 bonus points or 1000 bonus miles for every third night you stay between January 16 and April 30, 2006. Members can earn the bonus 10 times. Registration is required.

There’s a new Priority Club Visa offer which is better than the standard 10,000 points with first purchase:

• 15,000 bonus points with first purchase
  

• Free $20 statement credit with first purchase
  

• 10,000 bonus points after spending $15,000 on the card each year
  

• No fee the first year ($29/year thereafter)
  

• Gold status in the Priority Club program (which doesn’t offer much)

It’s still not a great card to put large amounts of spending on. It only offers 1 Priority Club point per dollar spent (3 per dollar at Priority Club hotel properties, e.g. Intercontinental and Holiday Inn). I’d take almost any other card’s earning strength. But the offer is an improved one and the signup bonus is nice. And the earning isn’t bad when earning 3 points per dollar spent or if you put exactly the annual spending on the card needed for the bonus points — no more and no less.

There’s also a similar new Priority Club Business Visa which offers the same benefits as above except it’s 15,000 bonus miles each year you spend $20,000 on the card.

Yes, you should be able to get both cards (provided you have the requisite credit). And given the issuer of these cards I’d bet that you can sign up for the cards multiple times and earn the signup bonus each time.

When I listed holiday shopping promos last week I left out the offer from Priority Club: double points for paying with Visa and threshold bonuses for various spend levels (up to 10,000 bonus points for $1000 in spending).

Spending at 23 merchants count towards the bonuses.

Thanks to the MilesLink newsletter for the reminder.

Priority Club — the frequent guest program for Intercontinental Hotels, Crowne Plazas, Holiday Inns, etc. — frequently offers stay bonuses.

The intention is to target certain members, generally offering 10,000 bonus points for a specific number of stays.

In practice, anyone who signs up for the bonuses gets them, regardless of whether the member is targeted for the bonus or not.

Furthermore, historically you could sign up for several of the bonuses and get all of them — even though the intention is that a member only receive one bonus.

As always with these sort of things your mileage may vary. But if you have several stays coming up between November 1 and December 31 with hotels that are part of this program, you could pick up as many as 60,000 bonus points.

You’ll need to go to the
designated website to register for each promotion and enter the following promotion codes one at a time:

• 3844 (Stay 3 times, earn 10,000 points)
  

• 1906 (Stay 5 times, earn 10,000 points)
  

• 8898 (Stay 6 times, earn 10,000 points)
  

• 5675 (Stay 7 times, earn 10,000 points)
  

• 4638 (Stay 8 times, earn 10,000 points)
  

• 8424 (Stay 10 times, earn 10,000 points)

(Thanks to Flyertalk’s “Wonderdude” for compiling this information from posts in that bulletin board’s Priority Club forum.)

Holiday Inn’s sweepstakes is giving away a free iTunes download just for entering.

Website is crawling at the moment, but when it works all you have to do is fill out a form and you’ll get an email with an iTunes download code fairly quickly.

Receive 300 Priority Club points for requesting a price quote through FordDirect.com.

Following on the recent spate of Presidential Suites available for award redemption at Intercontinental hotel properties (using the standard room 30,000 Priority Club points per night rate, see here and here), Flyertalk’s Savage25 surveyed all the Intercontinental hotels to see where this glitch is currently coming up. The report:

For kicks, I tried a random date in October for reward nights at all ICs. ICs that are out of the way seem to have great redemption deals.



Figures are Best Flexible rates for the respective room types on the date of redemption.






Asia

====



IC THE GRAND PALACE SRINAGAR

KING PRESIDENTIAL SUITE $1,000







Middle East and Africa

==========



INTERCONTINENTAL DOHA

1 KING BED DIPLOMATIC SUITE $563



INTERCONTINENTAL RIYADH

1 KING EXECUTIVE SUITE $933



MASSARAH TAIF INTERCONTINENTAL

1KNG 1QN 2 BEDROOM ROYAL SUITE $1,119

2 KING 3 TWIN BED VIP VILLA $1,279



PALAZZO JOHANNES. MONTECASINO JOHANNESBURG

1 KING BED SUITE $458



INTERCONTINENTAL ABU DHABI

ONE BEDROOM GULF SUITE $1,225



IC RESORT AL AIN, UAE

1 KING BED EMIRATES SUITE SMOKING $326



INTERCONTINENTAL ASTANA KAZAKHSTAN

1 KNG BD PRESIDENTIAL STE CITY VIEW $2,750





Latin America

===========



InterContinental SANTIAGO

1 KING BED PRESIDENTIAL SUITE $1,500



InterContinental TEQUENDAMA BOGOTA

1 KING 2 TWIN BEDS PRESIDENTIAL SUITE $450



Real InterContinental Metrocentro Managua, Nicaragua

1 KING BED PRESIDENTIAL SUITE $600



InterContinental DEL LAGO MARACAIBO

2 KING BED ROOM SUITE SINAMAICA $540

Better go get redeeming!

The InterContinental The Grand Palace Srinagar also has its Presidential Suite available as a 30,000 point award. Another mistake, and this too will disappear quickly.

So where exactly is this?

Known as the paradise on earth, Srinagar, the summer capital of the state of Jammu & Kashmir, is nestled in the beautiful Kashmir valley, surrounded by soaring snow-clad mountains midst the soft murmur of river Jhelum and idyllic lakes.



Formerly the palace residence of the maharajas, InterContinental The Grand Palace Srinagar, ringed by the majestic Himalayan ranges, overlooks the picturesque Dal Lake. Originally built in 1910, this twin storey heritage property with its sprawling lawns has been carefully restored to its former glory and is today a full facility destination.



The palace is located 15 kms from the airport and just minutes away from the city’s key historic attractions.

The Intercontinental Grand in New Delhi is showing all of its room types available for 30,000 point redemption — not just the basic room. This is your opportunity to get the Presidential Suite on an award booking.

Not all nights are available, and this will not last. August 3rd was first identified at Flyertalk.com in the Priority Club Suite Redemption Alert thread. I see most nights available, presumably except those where the Presidential Suite is already booked.

KING PRESIDENTIAL SUITE
KING BEDROOM LIVING ROOM DINING ROOM PRIVATE SAUNA AND JACUZZI GUEST BEDROOM 3TVS BROADBAND INTERNET ACCESS SAFE

Priority Club is offering 20% off hotel night award redemption for stays between April 15 and June 15 at select properties.

Participating Crowne Plaza properties are only 16,000 points… Participating Intercontinentals are just 24,000…