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 😉

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!

The Westin snack and minibar sensors are way too sensitive. I was recently at Westin and accidentally knocked over a can of peanuts on the snack tray. I picked up and placed the peanuts back on the tray but apparently did not do it fast enough. The next day I noticed charges for peanuts and cookies on my hotel bill – apparently I also knocked the cookies off its place on the sensored tray.

I had to talk to the front desk to  straighten out my bill before I left the hotel. Due to the long line, I  wasted 15 minutes of my valuable time – luckily I didn’t have an urgent meeting or catch a flight. The front desk agent was very nice and removed the charges without question. However, this inconvenience gave me the feeling of Westin trying to tack on extra charges to my bill. Had I not reviewed the bill before leaving the hotel, I would have been charged $20 for the peanuts and cookies.

Westin could have prevented this inconvenience had they done the following:

1.  Had the front desk warn me about the minibar and snack sensors. The front desk should have to told me I had x seconds to put the snack or drink back or I will be charged for removing the item off its place. What if I only want to see the packaging or read the ingredients?

2.  Have a very large sign on top of the snacks and on the minibar door clearly stating that their is a sensor tied to the drinks and snacks. The tray holding the snacks had a sign on the edge of the tray which was way below eye level. The sign on the door was so small I couldn’t even read it with a magnified glass.