redtop43

I almost always stay at Orleans. There are 5 tiers in Boyd's loyalty program, bottom to top they are Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald/Onyx/Titanium. Point thresholds are 0/750/15K/50K/200K. So Sapphire is relatively easy to make (especially since if you were Sapphire the year before they start you at 500), higher tiers much harder. I don't really expect much from my Sapphire status.

But, I discovered to my great disappointment, that there are better rates on hotels.com than for Sapphires! I don't expect anything great. Maybe a buck lower than the street price. But not higher! I just booked a stay from Nov 7-12. The Orleans website price was $280; Hotels.com was $215. This is all before taxes and resort fee and resort fee tax. Hotels.com, after saying "43/night" disclosed the full price of $422.

If you go to the Orleans site without being logged in, I think the price was $65 a night, and 10% off for AAA or AARP. The Sapphire price varied by night but averaged $56.

A side irritation I have is this. If this were a Hilton/Marriott/etc., my 50+ nights a year would get me top-tier elite status and at least a late checkout, which would be really nice since I always take a redeye home the final day. I think Sheraton used to have a policy for high tiers that you could check out the same time you checked in, so if you check in at 10PM you can check out at 10PM. Orleans gives me a whopping hour, from noon to 1, which pretty much any hotel will do it you ask.

DenverBrian

Hilton and Marriott each have something like 5,000 hotels in their ecosystems. Boyd has...ten? Much of this is economies of scale.

Also, coming out of COVID, Las Vegas in general is having hiccups and stutters in revenue management among many hotels, as they figure out what demand truly is. I'm not surprised that an OTA like hotels.com might have been cheaper for a specific set of dates.

gengar

Are OTA bookings eligible for loyalty program benefits? If not, I'm not that surprised that some OTA prices are lower.

To be fair, Hilton doesn't guarantee late checkout (one of the many reasons I don't care for HH) and stuff like Cosmo is exempt from the late checkout benefit for MR.

redtop43

[QUOTE=gengar;33325687]Are OTA bookings eligible for loyalty program benefits? If not, I'm not that surprised that some OTA prices are lower.

There is no real "loyalty" program for Orleans. They have the casino rating program, but nothing that gives you points, status, etc. for hotel stays.

Also, most chains have a "lowest price guarantee" that says they will match any price on a third-party site except opaque bookings. Since the hotels pay a commission to the OTA's, it's hard to imagine they would want to direct you to them even if they don't have to give loyalty points. I think they mostly WANT to give loyalty points if they are actually making you loyal!

gengar

Not at all justifying what Orleans' business model might be, but It's still just RM at the end of the day. Even if Orleans would prefer to sell the rooms directly, many of these OTA sales are done in huge chunks and may have been sold at a time when demand was (projected to be) suppressed. OTOH if Orleans' model depends on OTAs to fill rooms then it's no surprise this type of pricing would continue.

redtop43

I've looked at a number of other dates, and my Orleans account is giving the lowest rates. Still, many hotel chains have a "best price guarantee" but apparently Boyd Gaming doesn't.

mtofell

Boyd has always had kind of a stingy program IMO. I poked around all of them before deciding to focus my efforts on Caesars.

redtop43

I should add, I checked the rates for an upcoming stay and they had gone down about $20 a night. So of course I called and rebooked. Their room rates bounce around a lot.