Originally Posted by
USirritated
How much effort do you put into LNF and how do you leverage it across the brands, especially on the low end?
It's simple. I search for all Marriott brands (a lot of LNF sites alow you to filter by "hotel name", and since a lot of Marriot brands have "by Marriott" in them, I can get results from a number of Marriott brands by just typing in "Marriott".
Exclusing perhaps Courtyard (not that it usually comes up as the cheapest anyway), on most of my regular stays, I'm open to any decent Marriott property at any price.
So I'm therefore happy enough if I can get a $90 a night Fairfield knocked down to $50 a night, even if I can also get a $100++ FS Marriott knocked down to $75 a night. (I typically need 3 weekday nights a week, so even a $25+tax difference adds up quickly, and as far as I can see the extra earning -- 10x vs 5x and 500 vs 250 Plat welcome bonus -- is not worth the $25+tax or more difference on a cumulative basis.)
I'm fortunate to have my regular stays be in an area (greater Anaheim CA) where pretty much always one Marriott family property or another is LNFable to well under $100, though far from always the same one.
(I'm not that picky about the hotels on these stays. When there's no Marriott promo going on, I'm likely to be going for the frequent "every 2 stays get 8000 points" promos at Choice with stays at cheap Comfort Inns, which with no LNF trick I can typically get in the $60ish+tax range. Part of the key is that on these stays I can get breakfast where I'm going after I leave the hotel, if I don't like the breakfast at that hotel enough.)