Triangle Trip

Similar to the airline offers, Marriott launched a fast track to Elite status program that goes from May 11, 2009 to June 26, 2009. You will receive double credit for each night at a Marriott. Here’s the link to register. It is hard to get Elite status at Marriott because Marriott Rewards do not count stays + nights. You can only achieve Elite status with actual nights – so checking in and out of Marriott hotels throughout the week will not get you Elite status faster.

To earn Marriott Platinum status, you will need to have 75 nights. Marriott’s current fast track to Elite status offer goes on for 7 weeks. If you are a weekly traveler with 4 nights per week, you will get 28 to 30 nights during this promotion period. With double nights, you will have 60 Marriott Reward nights — that will leave you 15 short of Platinum status. I don’t think this fast track to Elite status is worth it unless you have already been staying at a Marriott or are committed to staying at Marriott for the rest of the year.

From the promotion link, I also noticed Marriott has implemented Elite Rollover Nights. If I understand the term correctly, every additional night after the 75th night will count toward next year’s status. This would be a huge differentiator against SPG, Hilton and Hyatt. The hardest part is still getting 75 actual nights.

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 😉

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!