I have been booking SLH properties with more regularity in the last few months given that we have our elite status extended with many hotel chains, and also there are many situations where the rate on SLH.com is materially cheaper than on Hyatt.com and not worth paying extra on Hyatt so I personally think it can be useful to have status with SLH as well. I realize many FTers here will care mostly about booking SLH via Hyatt, but for people who want to know about the SLH Invited loyalty program, I thought here would be a good place to share observations and information. I do not consider myself an expert and hopefully I am not spreading wrong information below, so I welcome anybody to correct anything they think is not correct below in addition to sharing their own tidbits about the SLH Invited program.
SLH Invited Program Tiers
The three SLH tiers:
Intrigued: 0-3 nights per year
Inspired: 4-12 nights per year. Free breakfast + one-category room upgrade. This is effectively the same as for Hyatt members.
Indulged: 13+ nights per year. To renew this tier we only need 12 nights, not 13 nights. The benefits are the same as the previous tier except that we earn a free night certificate every 12 nights. The free night award is limited to 300 USD; if the night costs more than 300 USD it’s effectively a 300 USD discount.
Elite Benefits
Upgrades have been done proactively every time I stayed at SLH hotels without me having to ask, and on occasion they were more generous than the standard 1-category upgrade. However on average the upgrades are less generous that the big hotel chains where I frequently get suites. Based on the hotels where I stayed, the quality of the room has been on par with comparable hotels of big hotel chains, but for a similar price tag breakfast has been generally better than the competition. So bottom line, for me it’s been lesser upgrades, similar room quality, better breakfast.
The best feature of SLH is that many of their hotels are in markets with virtually no competition from big hotel chains. Where there is little competition, I am not picky about receiving a modest upgrade – I am happy to get one at all. For stays in cities with many choices from the big chains, I would probably not book at SLH often but it can happen, for example in Belgrade just a few months ago, the SLH hotel there is a far superior option than the Luxury Collection hotel, the Hyatt Regency, and the Hilton.
SLH Free Night Certificates
While SLH is not a points program on the surface, the more you stay the more you earn free nights so effectively it’s not completely different than a points program. To maximize the value of the program it’s best to end the qualification year with a multiple of 12 nights (12, 24, 36, etc.) because any excess nights will be wiped off and the counter restarts at zero at the renewal date. Also the better payoff is to stay at cheaper hotels and then use the voucher at a hotel which is 300 USD per night (or more). Theoretically if we stay exactly 12 nights at hotels 100 USD per night, we will earn a value of 25% of our spend which is higher than the value of points earned at most hotel chains, but realistically the value will be lower than that since most SLH properties cost a lot more than 100 USD per night.
Implicitly, this means the more expensive a hotel is, the more incentive we have to book on Hyatt.com to earn points, and the cheaper a hotel is, the better it is to book on SLH.com to earn the free night award quickly. The other consideration between booking on Hyatt.com or on SLH.com is whether Hyatt is running a points promo such as 3x or 4x, that sometimes gives me the incentive to book on Hyatt because the value of points earned will overcome the price premium we normally have to pay on Hyatt vs SLH which is usually at least 10%, and often 20% or more.
There are a couple of features about the SLH free night award which are far from ideal: the night must be booked at least 14 days in advance, and once it’s booked if we cancel the reservation then the night is forfeited. This is more restrictive than any other hotel chain I know.
Price Differences by Booking Platform
Regarding the price differential between Hyatt.com and SLH.com, I should also mention that based on my experience some hotels have lower rates on their own website so it can be that Hyatt>SLH>Direct. In those situations, booking on Hyatt might be prohibitively expensive. Some properties always offer the same rates direct or SLH. When researching a new property I always double check to ensure it’s the case.
I would also note that we should login our SLH Invited account before doing a hotel search – many times the lowest member rates are only viewable after log in, so the rate differential between SLH and Hyatt can be larger than it originally appears to be if doing a basic search on SLH without being logged in.
I have come across some SLH properties which are also part of GHA Discovery. Since top tier status with GHA (Black) gives a 2-category room upgrade and no breakfast compared to SLH which is 1-category upgrade with breakfast, the best program to use can vary by property and the desire to have breakfast or not. To complicate matters further, perhaps not surprisingly the price is not always the same when booking on SLH vs GHA Discover.
Elite Qualification Nights
To conclude, some small and less important details about renewal dates and how they count SLH nights in each qualification year:
- An account qualification year is not the same as a calendar year, unlike the big hotel chains. The first time we achieve a higher tier, that calendar date becomes the account renewal date.
- For people with a renewal date between the check-in and check-out date, all night credited are based on check-out date. For example, let’s assume the following: someone is already Indulged level and has 12+ nights in the previous 12 months. Assume renewal date March 7, 2021 so will automatically renew Indulged tier to March 7, 2022 by virtue of having 12+ nights. Next stay: 12-night stay on March 1-13. Upon check-out all 12 nights will count in account year March 2021 – March 2022 so that means this guest has qualified for Indulged until March 7, 2023 as a result of this stay.
- When using a free night certificate, the night will not count as a qualifying night if it costs less than 300 USD because it will essentially be free. If the night costs a bit above 300 USD and requires a cash payment, then it will count as a qualifying night.