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 😉

“Earn 500 bonus Starpoints every night and an additional 5,000 every 10th night.”

Starwood Hotels (W Hotels, Westin, Sheraton) have been addressing the economic downturn with a strategy that I can only call a self-inflicted double whammy.  Because of falling demand, prices for a single night at Starwood properties have been falling.  While this is a normal business practice, what’s disconcerting is that at the same time, they are rolling out excessive point-earning incentives.

In exchange for short term solvency, they are guaranteeing a future “market correction.”  Will it be in the form of a bankrupt points program?  Will a Sheraton reward rise from 2,000 points to 10,000?   Will Westin rebrand as Le Meridien? For someone with a very generous balance of points, I’m downright worried.

If anything, SPG should be increasing their rates for this fairly inelastic market.  Yes, there are alternatives like video conferencing, but they’ll never replace the effectiveness of a face to face meeting.  On top of that, I’m guessing that SPG’s bread & butter business traveller is as greedy as I am.  The hotel stay is going to be reimbursed, so they’re not going to compromise their starpoints balance to save $20 a night by moving over to the Hilton.

I don’t care how bad the economy is, any self-respecting consultant won’t be found at a La Quinta.  What’s next?  Online coupons?

-Terminal D