Club Carlson have announced a list of 20 properties that are changing category, the problem is that these changes go into affect on March 1st (tomorrow).
- 13 hotel properties are going up in price (4 are going up two categories, rest are going up one category)
- 7 properties are going down in price (6 are going down by two categories, the other one is going down one category)
Most travel hackers simply stopped caring about Club Carlson when they removed their last free night benefit on the co-branded credit card in 2015. I think this award category change from Club Carlson is incredibly stupid, you’re giving people one days notice (so theoretically people can still book before the change and you lose any potential savings from doing an actual no notice change) but you damage the brand and build no confidence to people going forward in the program that feature no notice changes won’t happen.
Hat tip to View From The Wing
There is no reason to stay in a hotel for a leisure traveler anymore.
Except for a airport hotel or a really late arrival in a small town, where the lodging is motels anyways.
The hotel biz is dirty.
They play dirty.
The OTA play dirty with the fake discounts and markups and commissions.
The whole thing stinks.
Is there any reason why airbnb is worth 30 Bn
More than Marriott?
the writing is on the wall. For leisure, the hotel biz is dead.
Who wants to over pay for internet and mediocre restaurant food.
How could a leisure traveler even find 60 Hyatt hotels to stay at? There is only one Hyatt in Spain, one in Italy. Just a few spg in Italy outside of main cities today when there used to be ones in Bologna, Genoa and several in Florence. Sure the CBD is full of conference sized Marriotts with overpriced but not very central locations that are dead zones on the weekends.
The Hotel Business is dying with these chain hotels and their super mark ups and fake loyalty programs.
Most Club Carlson hotels are out right disgusting in the USA.
These no notice devaluations along with programs without award charts leads to lack of consumer confidence in the value of hotel and airline reward programs. I’ve determined that bank points are the correct currency to invest in for rewards earnings and redemption. I’ve chosen UR as it has the best floor for value (1 cent per point cash, 1.5 cents per point via CSR travel booking). I’d rather have the flexibility to book any airline and hotel at any time vs a rewards program that works to constantly lower the benefit the participant receives.
While in the past I may have worked to attempt obtaining status with a reward program at a hotel or airline, it’s been shown time and time again that the brands do not reward loyalty and would prefer customers simply shop around and pay them cash. So Chase can get my loyalty and all the commodity airlines and hotels can get screwed by removing any incentive for me to prefer their product over a competitor.