Minimum stay on award bookings but not paid stay for same room type?
 

Hi all,

Looking at a stay at the Hotel Indigo Hakone Gora next year and I'm noticing that there is no availability for one night reward stays *at all*, but 2 night has a bit more and 3 night appears to have even more. I'm seeing this even when cash rates for the exact same room type is available for one night. Example: Mar 9-11, Deluxe King Hillside is available on points or cash. For Mar 9-10 or 10-11 only it is available with cash but not on points.

I thought that reward stays had to match the min stay of paid stays. Has anyone else seen this at other hotels, and is there a good way I can get around this (not in the mood to spend 30 minutes explaining it to a rep if they can't do anything)?

This came to my attention in January and I was trying to get a comment from IHG Customer Service if the two nights minimum stay requirement at this hotel is in accordance with corporate policy. The initial answers to my questions about this were like “you can’t reserve an award stay because you don’t have enough points”. ... OK.

The final answer I received about one month ago was this:

”As (...) has mentioned, this particular hotel required at least 2 consecutive nights for points reservation. Additionally, most hotels only allow 5% of their room inventory for points reservation or commonly call as Reward Nights. As this is depending on the hotels' discretion, rooms are subject to availability. Reward Nights might not be available on the requested dates because the hotel is already sold-out.”

It seems that in the meantime also the IC Beppu introduced the two nights minimum policy. Let’s see which one is next.

Noticed the same a few weeks ago for Hakone. I had 5 nights booked for Fall 2020 when the hotel opened earlier this year and these were 1 night each individually at 40k points per night which was the launch rate.

Then the intro of dynamic pricing came around a few weeks ago and I checked again. I couldn't pull up reward availability night by night, but 2 or more nights worked confirming your observations as well.

I managed to get a room for 5 nights at average of 32.5k points so went with that instead and then cancelled the individual nights.

Now though I see nightly rate has even increased to 50k points many nights I checked. Seems base rate was increased silently.
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Btw, based on my observations this only happens at Indigo Hakone and IC Beppu so far. Hence it may be good to note that both properties belong to the same developer / owner IIRC.

One could use the Ambassador cert at the IC Beppu more easily in the past, in fact, I have a FWNC booking for a Jr Suite for Fall 2020 (doubt we'll be permitted to travel by then). However, of late, most if not all future weekends seem unavailable even though Best Flex rates are on offer. YMMV

Datapoint: Indigo Hakone is still imposing minimum stay requirement for reward nights only (single nights can still be booked for paid stays). Makes it impossible to redeem a single night cert here. Ambassador customer service is unable to manually reduce a booked 2+ night award here into a single night reservation.

When I asked if this violates IHG’s “no blackout date” policy for rewards since it’s absolutely impossible to ever book a 1 night reservation here, I was told it doesn’t because the property is still allocating “at least 5% of their daily room inventory to Reward Nights.”

-FlyerBeek

Well, they don't really impose an official 2 night stay minimum for rewards, just cheekily they show no availability for 1 night stays.

I know it is the same outcome, but as your inquiry with IHG shows they seem to find that ok. I would agree that this is not a nice way to go about it by the property, really odd what benefits they think they get from it. More F&B revenue can't be it. YMMV.

The 'benefits' to the property could be a savings in staff time (and therefore cost) to service the room following guest departure.

From figures I have seen elsewhere hotels actually get very little cash from IHG for reward nights.

So no wonder some hotels try and minimise the costs of serviving reward stays where they can even though this might break the spirit of the rules even if the rules havn't actually been broken,

If you mean that the cost of servicing a room post departure of guest is more time consuming and costly than a regular room servicing for a multiple night stay then the differences are relatively marginal (I'm quite familiar with back of house ops, rev mgmt, operating costs etc.) though things like bed sheets and towels and all will need to be changed upon departure that may otherwise be used for 2-3 nights and a final room clean has a few extra steps (if done according to operating manual / guidelines).

It is possible, but would surprise me if that is the motivation. As you said, compensation for rooms (unless 95% or higher occupancy) is not super awesome so only allowing multiple nights in a place like Japan maybe they hope to make more money on F&B as nothing is included in reward nights? No idea, a bit of a head scratcher still. YMMV.

Update: was just able to make a single-night reward reservation at the Indigo Hakone for next month. Plenty of other single night stays now seem to be available on points. My first time seeing this option available without a minimum stay requirement specifically for reward reservations in the months I've been looking at this property. I've got no idea whether my recent complaints resulted in a policy change (unlikely), this is a temporary glitch, or this property has changed its policies and is now allowing single-night award stays on a regular basis.

-FlyerBeek

Thanks for reporting back, good to know and hope it stays that way.