Triangle Trip

Continuing its generosity, Starwood (SPG) is offering free weekend nights for every two stays at their hotels. You can redeem weekend nights (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) right after you have earned them but I think you will need to redeem it before September. This is a great excuse to go on vacation! Here’s the preview link for more details on the offer. Note this offer is not live yet, you will need to revisit SPG’s site to register later this month.

SPG’s current 500 bonus points per night will end this month (April 30, 2009). This follow up offer starts on May 1 and ends July 31, 2009. The SPG offer is still better than Hilton’s 1,000 bonus point per night offer (see previous post). For the next three months (13 weeks), you can potentially earn 10+ free weekend nights if you stayed at a SPG property every week.

For the traveling rookies/novices, each hotel stay means each time you checkin to a hotel. If you have the stamina, you can checkin and out of the same hotel to accumulate more SPG free weekend nights. However there’s a catch. SPG and most other hotels would not give you credit for a stay if you checkin on consecutive nights at a single property. This means you cannot checkin at the San Francisco St. Francis on Monday night, check out on Tuesday morning and re-checkin Tuesday night. SPG will only award you two nights and one stay in the scenario described above.

So if you want to maximize your free weekend nights, we recommend you checkin and out of different SPG properties throughout the week — that’s if you have the stamina to do it 😉

Car rental companies are eliminating flexible one way car rental returns. Major car rental companies like Avis, Hertz and National used to treat a Metro area as one car rental facility. With corporate and leisure rates, customers used to be able to rent from one metro area and return to another – i.e., rent at SFO and return at SJO. As recent as January 2009, I rented a car from National at LAX and returned the car at SNA without penalty.

Since March of 2009, I began to realize the major car rental companies are charging their customers for returning to a different car rental facility. I was looking to rent a car from Hertz or National at Burbank airport and returning the car to LAX and noticed extra charges for dropping the car off at a different location. National Car Rental adds a drop off charge with unlimited miles while Hertz charges a standard daily rental rate plus $0.30 per mile.

There are however exceptions on the east coast. Due to the competitive nature of the one way rentals in the greater New York area, you can still get good rates when you rent from NYC and return it to New Jersey/Newark. I have also rented from downtown Philadelphia and returned the car to PHL without any penalties or extra mileage charge.

I recommend you read the fine print of the car rental quote before you commit to the contract. Flexible return policies are out the window in this tough economy.

Hilton’s latest promotion is aweak attempt to match Starwood’s (SPG) 500 points per night bonus promotion. SPG was offering 500 extra points per night for stays from January 7 to April 30, 2009 – here’s the link in case you haven’t registered. Hilton’s latest offer of 1,000 points per night will go from April 13 to June 30, 2009 – here’s the link to the Hilton offer.

Why is the Hilton 1,000 night bonus offer weak? Here are the reasons:

1.  Point for Point value – Assuming you do not have status at either chain, SPG’s offer is much sweeter. You get one point for every dollar spent at a Starwood Hotel. The 500 bonus points can be viewed as $500 of your total spent. Hilton gives you 10 points for every dollar spent at a Hilton property. Hilton’s 1,000 bonus points are only worth $100 compared to SPG’s $500 value per night.

2.  Length of Promotion – SPG’s 500 bonus points per night went on for 3+ months vs. Hilton’s 2.5 month promotion.

I am going to be staying with SPG for the rest of the month to finish out the 500 bonus nights. The added bonus is I will make SPG Platinum for 2010!