I travel a lot for my job (I am after all an International man of mystery
When I first started this travelling job two years ago, I was a little naive about how it all worked. I would simply use a travel site like Expedia.com or Hotels.com (who I think are owned by the same company), and find something affordable and within the budget my company considers 'reasonable.'
Hotels.com have a rewards program that gives you one free night for every ten nights you stay, and Expedia have a new program that from what I can tell absolutely blows. The other reality of using these kinds of web sites is that generally the rates are about the same as booking direct with the hotel, and because Expedia and sites like them charge a commission to the hotel, the hotel treats you like garbage when you arrive and puts you in their cheapest nastiest room, and refuses to give you any loyalty points.
So I learned pretty quickly that it was better to choose a chain and stick with it, and for me that chain was IHG. This group includes Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, and a few others that are less common, or more geared towards extended stay; which I avoid like the plague.
This chain has a great network of hotels, and pretty much every town I ever visit has a property with a few minutes of the place I need to be. Despite staying at dozens of hotels, I've only found three individual properties that I disliked and refused to stay in. One wasn't bad, but was just run down. One was by the sea, and smelt as if it was rotting like an old wooden ship. And the other was an extended stay that smelt of feet and despair.
Other than those unfortunate examples I've found the properties to be pretty reasonable. Ranging in price from $80-$130 depending on location. The rooms are very consistent, so you are rarely if ever surprised by the room. It always has a refrigerator and microwave. Usually a table to sit at, a desk to work at, a bed of course, and a reasonable bath with shower. I rarely eat in this kind of hotel, so I'm not going to get into describing the food. But generally the Holiday Inn Express has a selection of simple basic food for breakfast. The Holiday Inn usually has a restaurant, so breakfast there can vary tremendously depending on property.
As well as the consistency and convenient locations, I enjoy the hotel's loyalty program known as Priority Club. You get 10 points for every dollar you spend, and once you earn Platinum Elite status you get a 50% bonus on your points each night. Priority Club also have amazing promotions, frequently offing double points, or specific bonus points for visiting certain hotels.
The promotion they had in the last quarter of 2011 was so good it yielded 58,500 bonus points for me in January of 2012, which combined with a few stays jumped me right to Platinum Elite Status through 2013. Woohoo!
I probably would have continued to use their properties on an ongoing basis, but an incident happened at one hotel during a rare air conditioner servicing where some kind of allergen got into the room and gave me severe allergies for a whole day. (Don't worry, I was well compensated for this!) As I spent the day in a rival hotel being annoyed at my runny eyes and nose, I began to consider trying out another chain.
The problem with just simply trying another chain is that you have to start at the bottom of the ladder when it comes to all the perks of top elite status. No more free upgrades to suites, no more free drinks or food, no more bonus points. Or so I thought.
Seems like the sneaky hotels have realized that they have to offer an incentive to win over rival loyal customers, and they do, but it's all hush hush under the table and behind closed doors. I stumbled across a web forum for people who like to discuss hotel points and air miles and found out a little secret that was quite interesting for someone in my position.
Status Match
In the price range I stay my choices really boil down to Marriott, IHG, and Hilton. There are others, but they are not common enough to find in all the places I need to travel. And there are others that are aimed at a cheaper market and therefore many of them suck. And of course there are those aimed at people who do my bosses job who have the ability to spend far more at hotels.
When it comes to Hilton properties, the sub brand that most closely meets my needs in terms of price and locations would be Hampton Inn. And frankly, I hate the logo, and the look of them from the outside. They just put me off. They are not that bad inside, but nothing to get excited about.
Marriott on the other hand have their regular Marriott brand, Courtyard, and Fairfield, all of which can, depending on location, fall into my travel budget.
So after a little research I found out you can simply email Marriott and ask them for a status match. They review your elite status with another rival chain and offer you what they call a 'challenge.' In my case because I want their top status (which normally takes 75 paid nights to obtain), they told me I must stay 18 nights in 90 days, and if I do that not only would they give me Platinum Elite status for the 90 days, but I would earn it for the rest of the year if I successfully completed the challenge. On the down side, if you miss the challenge even by a single night you are downgraded back to your original status, and you can only apply for one challenge per year. So if you are going to take a challenge, you might want to be careful of when you begin the challenge.
Sure enough I opened a new Marriott Rewards account (I had previous just used my wife's because I used Marriott so rarely it seemed pointless to have my own) and within 48 hours they had upgraded me from member to Platinum Elite.
So now when I visit a Marriott property I get the free room upgrades, the free stuff they give Platinum members and a general ass kissing on check in. More importantly I now earn free nights in their hotels more quickly and get to stay in a nicer room, which when you travel is a big plus.
Time will tell how I like Marriott compared to Holiday Inn. But so far so good. Because Platinum Elite is generally much harder to earn than Priority Club, they seem to treat it a bit more seriously and provide more perks. And although the rewards don't seem as generous as Priority Club, having a decent number of points at two chains will radically open up my travel options when I travel for free on my own time.
And speaking of points, consider too that the best value for them seems to be spending them on free hotel nights. Priority Club was recently offering $100 in Amazon.com gift cards for around 31,000 points. Which is pretty awesome. But for 35,000 points you could have a night at the Crowne Plaza in Time Square NYC, worth $400. So spending the points on non-hotel items may not be the best use of them.
I'm not going to dump Holiday Inn, they've been a good chain, and I have some favorite properties that are so convenient and new that I will still use those. For now though everything else will be Marriott until I complete my 'challenge.' Then I'll let you know how it went.
