Triangle Trip

How much is 10,000 United miles worth to you?

Are you willing to sacrifice three stays toward status at your favorite hotels (Starwood, Marriott, Hilton, etc.)?   Are you willing to forgo your free weekend nights at Starwood or free golf club offers from Crowne Plaza?  Are you willing to experience a motel for business travel (ghetto it up!)?  If so, here’s a deal for you!

Wyndham Hotel is offering 10,000 United miles in exchange for three stays at three of their hotels.  You will need to register or enroll (link to registration page) for a Wyndham account. After you have enrolled/registered, you must choose to earn United miles for your Wyndham stays. To get the 10,000 United miles, you will need to complete THREE stays at THREE DIFFERENT Wyndham branded properties. This means you cannot have all three stays at a Wyndham. Below is a list of the Wyndham family of hotels for you to choose wisely:

You will have to complete your three stays at three different brands between May 15, 2009 to September 10, 2009.  Unlike the Crowne Plaza offer which doesn’t allow you to have Priority Club points for your free nights, Wyndham will allow you to earn normal United miles for the three stays.  You should see your 10,000 bonus United miles in November or early December (6 to 8 weeks after the end of the promotion).

Aside from the Wyndham (which I have stayed at 2 to 3 times), all of the hotels on the list are like motels at best. I am not sure if I would stay there for business – maybe Ramada (and that’s a stretch). I have stayed at a Knights Inn and Travelodge when I was traveling as a college intern but that was years and years ago.  You might get lucky with Hawthorn Suites.  I have driven by a few and they looked new, especially the one’s near the airports.

I was recently redeemed my free SPG weekend nights (here’s the link to Big A‘s post on how to redeem your free SPG weekend nights) and want to let everyone know that the process was extremely smooth even thought I encountered a few hiccups along the way. Here’s my experience:

I rang Starwood’s customer service line to redeem my free weekend nights plus a five-night point redemption reservation, but found out that I was not properly enrolled. The customer service representative knew I was in a hurry and split my reservation into two reservations:  one for the free SPG weekend nights redemption and another for my SPG points redemption. The customer service representative also reassured me that he would make sure my free SPG weekend nights enrollment would be retroactive.

At the Sheraton front desk of my destination, I was greeted with a pleasant surprise:

1.  My SPG free weekend nights were made retroactive

2.  The Sheraton hotel (Category 6) I booked allowed me to redeem 4 nights using my SPG points, and gave me the 5th night for free

3.  I also got my Platinum choice award (I opted for the 500 bonus points of course)

In summary, Starwood’s worldclass service should be held as the standard for the travel industry. The US airline industry should look to Starwood for some guidance.

This is why hotel points are much better than airline miles — here’s a link to my previous post.

Following my previous post in regards to SPG Free Weekend Night promotion status, I emailed SPG to reconfirm my phone conversation. For the record, Starwood’s customer service center is truly world class. You are almost guaranteed to get an email response from a native English writer in 12 hours or less. Below is SPG’s standard response:

“I would like to inform you that you will not be able to see your free weekend online. To redeem a Free Weekend Night Award, Preferred Guest members in the U.S. or Canada should call 866-539-0059. Elite members should call their dedicated Gold or Platinum Members residing outside the U.S. and Canada should contact the Starwood Preferred Guest Customer Contact Center for your region. Advanced reservations are required and all members please mention Award ID 9FWFN when you call to book your reservation.”

In summary, here are our findings:

• The entire SPG Free Weekend Night promotion is done offline.
• You will have to keep track of your own stays to make sure you get free weekend night credit.
• You will have to ring customer service directly to make each booking.

SPG could have saved a lot of money and hassle (dealing with customer calls and emails) had they listed the above bulletpoints on their FAQ site.