Major Hotel Programs
 

Hi

I have been trying out a lot of different hotel brands over the last 2-3 years, collecting points on them , redeeming rewards and such. I don't know if its just me but I feel that out of all the major Hotel Reward Programs - the Priority Rewards Program and the corresponding IHG falls short in terms of quality, customer service, IT systems, etc. Any views?

As this thread concerns the basics of the hotel loyalty program, rather than the travel experience offered by the hotel group, I'll move to the MilesBuzz forum for more discussion. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

Your answers will be affected by the elite status of the responders. When you have elite status, you call a dedicated line and tend to get better service.

That said, they all have pros and cons. I know nothing about Priority. Starwood is great as I like the ability to transfer to airlines and to get great rates on hotels with Cash and Points. Hyatt treats its high-level elites very, very well - free breakfasts at Park Hyatts are a very, very valuable perk. Hilton treats mid-level elites very well. Marriott has never impressed me and the award levels are high for what I receive.

Hope that helps.

Don't think so. RA is arguably the best top tier among all programs, PC always offers a great range of promotions (current three are very different in nature, on top of generic bonuses), hotel coverage is probably the best in the world.
They obviously have weaknesses just like any other program.

Things really depend on your travel patterns.

I've never had a CS or IT/website problem with Priority Club.

I'm not a terribly active PC member - just an occasional stay, maybe 1-2 per year, but I find the program to be pretty good.

It's hard to drop a "quality" label on a program with such diverse brands. For an urban/resort stay, I'd probably look at the reviews of the specific Intercontinental Hotel in question vs. the nearby W, Renaissance, Marriott, etc. For a suburban stay, I've personally had good experiences with Staybridge - I think they stack up fine against Residence Inn in most places. For rural, I just look for whatever's newest - HI/HIX, Fairfield, or Hampton. The newness of the physical building seems to correlate fairly well with quality for a basic roadside motel. (Not to say that some older builds aren't well-maintained, but at least a new build is likely to have working power outlets, good HVAC, a tolerable mattress, etc.)

I think it might be a bit more difficult to be a "PC primary" guest if your main goal is urban business stays and then international or resort awards, simply because a lot of places only have one Intercontinental. I have had a lot of trips in my career where the "best" Marriott in a city is sold out or far from my price target, but there are usually other Marriotts to pick from.

The PC program is known around here for particularly good and frequent promotions... Whether it's ideal for you depends on where you tend to do paid stays and what your ideal rewards look like.

I think if you stay at Intercontinental hotels and/or have RA status, it's decent. For the other 95% of the hotels covered by PC, however, I haven't noticed anything worthwhile as a Gold or Platinum (maybe because it's so trivial to hit those levels).

I appreciate their IT systems shortcomings!

It has allowed me to earn more than 10,000 points/stay most of the time.

I hope they don't get too competent!

Yeah, they just *gave* me Gold without me having to ask for it. I'm not even sure what it is supposed to do for me.

i don't stay with pc very often but there is no doubt that they are the easiest program to earn points....i have over 150k pc points & i have only had a single $50 stay....

i never really had a problem with their it systems or customer service....as far as quality is concerned, i have always believed you get what you pay for....

And Hilton HHonors has so much better an IT system??? :confused:

At Priority Club, although their system has a bug that it forgets your search radius and keeps going back to 30 miles, still, I can see all the hotels in an area by rate type (AAA, etc) and it's the real rate (at least for the first night), and can even sort by that. By contrast, not only can't Hilton HHonors sort by rate, it can't even show you (in the summary) the real rates, for any type of rate. (At HHonors, I often get excited about a good rate in the hotel list, only to click through and find the rate doesn't exist. Never have I had such a problem at Priority Club.)

Yes, the My Offer Status page on Priority Club is rather buggy. But then, HHonors doesn't even attempt to show what offers you registered for!

lets not even go there....

HHonors site is the worst - I have to log in multiple times when I want to use it and I have no idea why. Plus it's hard to filter for all hotels in a city with a specific rate code or promotion available.

PC's is pretty good for my limited use - I used it recently to set up my two "Crack the Case" stays and had good success filtering on a specific brand or the "quality rating" for a city. (Let's be honest - if you gotta do a Saturday night at a HI/HIX type place, you want to filter on a "quality" rating!!) Of course, I have no idea what PC's quality metrics mean or whether they really correlate to the better properties... I like being able to hover over the map and see the hotel name associated with a point. For example, if I filter on Quality for Dallas, it shows about 50 points on a map with point 1 being the highest-quality-rated hotel.

I've always liked Marriott's site, even though the latest redesign is a big performance hog and a bit hard to use over a mobile 3G connection. Starwood's is in the middle somewhere...clean, attractive site but sometimes shows rates and availability on the initial page that aren't really there when you click on the link. (For example, I keep seeing C&P available on certain properties - but then you actually click and there it's unavailable.)

+1 Very annoying when you have to log in multiple times in order to complete a basic task.

I have never had any issues in getting my points posted when it came to Hilton or Starwood. For Priority Club, I always had to get in touch with the Customer Care and send countless emails before I get anything posted on my account, in spite of making all my reservations on my PC number.

I've had just the opposite experience. In over two years with Priority Club, I've had exactly one stay post as Non-Qualifying that should have qualified - fixed it easily. Wonder why you have so much trouble?

With Hilton, almost every stay I had to call in. Something wouldn't post right. Often it had to be written up and escalated. The hassle is the biggest reason I've given up on Hilton. (The website isn't especially usable either.)

I earn a free night with PC in about 1/4 the stay effort as Hilton, in general, too.