Some questions on the 50% cert
 

Just joined the program and doing my first stay in a few weeks ahead of another stay in August. Could anyone answer two questions on the 50% off certificate:

(1) What is meant by a weekend stay? Can I use it, for example, on a 7 night stay if it includes weekend nights?

(2) Can it be used to discount any omni.com package (eg suite w breakfast) or is it just for standard room?

Any info would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Staying at the OMNI-Marina in Corpus Christi, TX this week.

And I’m not at all impressed.

The room has potential with some of the amenities you’d expect at a mid-scale hotel. But other things are sorely lacking.

It’s kinda like OMNI can’t decide if they want to be a Marriott or a Ramada.

But the biggest negative here are the personnel.

Except for the car valet guys and the lady that checked me in...they are/were great....the rest of the folks at the front desk are sorely lacking.

Bad attitudes and surly greetings seem to be the norm at this OMNI. And it’s my first experience with this chain. I’m a lifetime Platinum at Marriott and that’s where I spend most of my hotel $$$’s.

1) yes on the weekend nights (Fri/Sat, possibly a slow Sunday?) So for a 7 night stay, it would be 5 nights at whatever rate, and 2 nights at the 50% rate.

2) 50% off the leisure (weekend) rate. I think it's called leisure rate on their website. As for suites, it's up to the hotel. It looks like some hotels offer the 50% on the suites, while others do not.

Omni Championsgate Orlando
 

Also, other Omni perks - If you have kids staying, Omni (at least Omni Championsgate, Orlando) give the kids an Omni Sensational kids goodie bag at check in . This contains sweets, games and most importantly a drink cup. This cup can be filled free of charge for the duration of the stay at the bars in the hotel. Great deal. Also cookies and milk in the rooms in the evenings for the kids.
Select guests get free drinks delivered to their room at a time for their choice each morning. Up to two drinks can be selected per person 2drinks x 2 adults and 2 kids = 8 drinks. Pastries can also be ordered for a very small charge.
50% off weekend night and free upgrade cert is mailed following your first stay as a select guest
Can't praise them enough.

I'm just coming off a 8 day, $2600 + stay at the OMNI Chicago -- while I did get free internet & USA today, it is kind of weird to pay that much and get 0 points and 0 miles for the stay (maybe $300/night isn't high enough to get me 500 lousy miles). I even used my corporate credit card, so I don't even get points for that!

Anyone know if they are still giving away 50% off weekend certs for new SelectGuest sign ups?

Do hotels.com or orbitz.com Prepayment rates count for pts or stay?

Travelzoo definitely does count as a stay. There is no pts system w/ Omni.

I always call in the reservation to OMNI after booking on a 3rd party site to add my number. Has always worked for me.

Edited today , October 1st, The true reflection of good service is how they react when they have bad service. The GM called today and went over and above in making this right, will definitely be back there!

Major changes to Omni program
 

At some point in the past year (December 2010?), Omni made a number of stealth changes to the Select Guest program. Current status tiers and benefits are listed at http://www.omnihotels.com/SelectGues...rBenefits.aspx. An overview:

• Status is now determined solely by nights/year. Stays are no longer counted.
• The thresholds for elite status have risen significantly. Platinum (formerly 6 nights/3 stays) now requires 10 nights; Black now requires 30 nights instead of 20.
• Late checkout for Plat & Black is now "based on availability." Ugh.
• Room upgrades for Black are apparently no longer confirmed 24 hrs in advance, but instead (you guessed it) based on availability. However, the benefit is now listed as a double upgrade.
• On the plus side for Black level members, suite upgrades are permitted when you redeem free nights -- of course, subject to availability.

To the extent there's any good news here, it's that the basic Select Guest benefits (for the level Omni bizarrely calls Gold) seem to have survived intact. The shoeshine & clothes pressing may not mean much to some guests, but the free WiFi and morning beverage service make signing up for the program worthwhile.

Apparently it changed in the past couple weeks. I double-checked my 2010 status count during the week between Christmas & New Years, and at that point it still included qualification by both stays and nights. (FYI, as Black Tier in 2010, I had no problems receiving suite upgrades on free night redemptions, and thankfully I often saw double upgrades previously, too.)

Thanks for the heads up - hopefully there will be some sort of communication from Select Guest sooner rather than later. I'm going to drop a note to the Loyalty Ambassador at the property primarily responsible for me keeping Black tier to see what she's heard.

Travel Zoo rates have not allowed earning of airline miles in the past
If it allows night credit thats another story.........

That timing is consistent with my memory of checking the site about 5 weeks & now recalling that nothing seemed different. (I booked their Cyber-Monday $99 rate for a stay later this month -- hence my visit to the site again this morning.)

What are some of the Platinum Welcome Amenities that you have gotten in the past?

I wrote an email to the New York hotel and was asked for my preference? Fruit, chocolates, what else?

The benefits that each Select Guest should receive are listed on the Omni chart:

http://www.omnihotels.com/SelectGues...rBenefits.aspx


As a reference point, a few months ago I stayed at the Omni Mandalay at a reduced rate (distressed AA passenger rate after a weather delay caused me to miss my flight). I did receive a stay credit, and the morning beverage selection card on this stay.

I know what the benefits are. I was wondering what is usually preseneted as the Local Market Welcome Amenity.

This is my first stay as Platinum.

Over the weekend, the Omni Berkshire set out a milk chocolate bar (containing puffed rice, like a Krackel bar; about 2 oz in size) on my arrival night.

Last summer I received 5 chocolate-covered (huge) strawberries on my night of arrival.

Whoops, sorry to have missed that detail in your post. :o

Still, the chart will hopefully be helpful to others who aren't familiar with the Select Guest tier offerings.

:td:

Will report back about my stay this weekend.

GHA Discovery incorporates Omni Select Guest and a variety of other hotel loyalty programs.

http://www.gha.com/Brands.aspx

Omni Select Guest criteria probably changed to align with the GHA Discovery program across different hotel brands.

There is another thread started earlier this week which outlined the new partnership with GHA.

I'm still waiting to see a communication (beyond their web site) from Select Guest regarding changes to their qualification criteria.

As per the other thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other...iance-gha.html), we now have someone from Omni (Caryn Kboudi, Omni and GHA PR team lead) on the forum. I have sent her a PM requesting further clarification about the Select Guest qualification criteria and the additional benefits gained from GHA membership.

I would be curious to know the effective date of the Select Guest program changes. I stayed 8 nights at Omni hotels in November (testing the waters after they denied a status match), and was expecting a bump to Platinum, but it never happened (even though the website still listed the old criteria until very recently).

I think transparency has long been a serious weakness in the Omni program. Some examples:

• I can't find a clear statement of the program's T&C on the website. The downloadable program materials seem to be more or less identical to the online brochure.
• Omni seems to treat different booking rates very differently for purposes of SG benefits. Although I've gotten stay/night credit in the past for gov't rate bookings, I have never ever received frequent flyer miles.
• Honestly, I begin to wonder if promotional rate bookings will even qualify for night credits. My 2-night stay from last weekend using the Cyber Monday $99 rate is not reflected at all in my account. (Has anyone gotten credit for a Cyber Monday rate stay?)

Also, I have to say that I'm unimpressed that Omni's alleged rep on FT has posted exactly once so far -- and that message advised a commenter that he had a PM about a general-interest, non-account-specific inquiry. This is not how a mature, well-run program operates.

I heard this week from one of the loyalty ambassadors that there will not be a formal communication sent out regarding the changes in qualification criteria. The ambassador was going to email the program lead with some questions regarding the changes and is supposed to let me know what she learns. I'm more than happy to share what I can.

I've not had this problem when booking under our corporate rate (not government). However, while I haven't had problems with airline miles posting, our corporate rate does not seem to qualify for nights toward a free night as an alternative (this seemed to change sometime during the last half of last year).
Is this someone who is openly posting on behalf of the program similar to the two Starwood Lurkers, or someone who works for the program and is merely posting on their own behalf on FT while providing insight to the new program?

This is exactly what I mean: there's simply no way to know what the rules are, or when they have changed or will change. I get that Omni (or any other program) can set whatever rules they want, including reducing or denying certain benefits for reduced-rate bookings. What I don't get is Omni's dogged refusal to post the rules so members can make rational (or at least informed) decisions about using the program and/or booking with Omni. Starwood, for example, has a detailed set of program rules on its public website.

UPDATE: Omni does have its T&C posted (http://www.omnihotels.com/SelectGues...onditions.aspx), although as far as I can tell there are no links to it anywhere on the Omni website (including their site map, http://www.omnihotels.com/SiteMap.aspx). I found the T&C only via careful Googling.

Not entirely clear. She identifies herself as "Omni and GHA PR team lead"; see http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/other...l#post15683660. It seems to me a bit odd to self-identify as "PR team lead" if one isn't speaking in an official capacity, but I suppose anything is possible.

OMNI Hotels Best Rate Guarantee (BRG) and Status Match
 

So far, I am less than impressed with Omni Hotels as it pertains to their Select Guest program and their BRG.

First, the Omni BRG program offers a seemingly impressive rate match plus a further 25% discount off a competing public rate. They do require though that you have a reservation confirmed from the other website. So, if the competing rate is non-refundable or subject to penalties, you effectively can't take advantage of the program. Since many if not most of the deeply discounted rates are subject to penalties, what seems like a generous BRG program isn't generous at all. The second representative advised me that they won't accept screen shots or check on a (non-confirmed) rate on another website because rates change all the time. I mentioned that none of the major brands/chains such as Starwood, Marriott, Hilton or Hyatt require that you have a confirmed booking from the third-party site and do indeed research the rate on the third-party website.

I was also advised twice that Omni no longer offers status matches from other programs or a membership kit with room upgrade certificates or discount certificates (as mentioned in other posts). I have tried to reach Caryn since last week via private email but have yet to receive any response. If anyone has had a more pro-customer interaction in the recent past as it pertains to the BRG, status matching or new member certificates, please let me know. My current opinion is that Omni does little to pursue new business from the frequent guests of their competitors.

I can't comment on the BRG as I've never had to put them to the test on it; likewise with status match (I'm also SPG PLT & HH DIA) as when I started with Omni there were only two tiers and when they went to the current program I immediately qualified for Black tier. Re the upgrade & discount certs, you might check the dates on those posts...I haven't seen them in either of the past two years. But I've yet to have a stay with them (2-3x/month) where I'm not upgraded, be it a full suite (or better) or a junior suite, which in some cases is a very large room with a nicely sized sitting area and extra 1/2 bath.

I have yet to receive credit (or AA miles) for a Cyber Monday stay last month. However, interestingly, the 2 nights did show up in my GHA account, and I now have a Local Experience award available for redemption.

By way of update, I received the following message about two weeks after I wrote to SG:

It's rather bizarre to me, as the customer service I've received in their hotels has been fantastic, but every interaction I've had with SG has been disappointing or worse.

This is an appalling lie. I didn't get an email either. (And the spamtrap excuse doesn't cut it: the address I have on file with them forwards to multiple accounts, including a Yahoo account where I always check the spam folder.)

If they really had sent such an email, one has to believe that someone on FT would have received it and posted about it. Instead, crickets.

Likewise I receive emails from Omni to two different accounts -- there was no formal communication from them regarding the changes to qualification criteria for 2011.

Agreed that the customer service levels at the properties I frequent has been fantastic...too bad the program itself seems to be lacking on that front.

I sat down with my Ambassador yesterday for quite a while and talked through a lot of the issues I've been seeing with my SG account this year (most of this was follow-up from a conversation we had Tuesday on the same subject and what she'd since learned from corporate). For those of us who are having problems seeing accurate information on our online accounts the past few weeks: There have been bugs related to some of their system upgrades that are causing some of the systems to not communicate correctly with each other. There are some fixes being uploaded tomorrow, and more coming in the next week or two. One of the bugs has been the unexpected flip-flopping of accounts between earning airline miles and earning credits toward free nights.

My ambassador was able to have my missing stays manually loaded to my profile/account. I logged in to show her they still aren't showing nights credited toward status tier renewal and she was going to check further into that, but she also showed me on the SG system where she sees them as being credited.

So, per our conversation...if you have concerns, reach out to your Ambassador (or the one you work with most frequently), they're definitely there to help out. I'm fortunate that mine is fantastic and really goes above & beyond in her efforts to help with just about anything related to Omni & Select Guest.

Has anyone had any luck reaching Caryn (the Omni FT rep)? I have yet to receive a response to my email. I would think that she would have seen my earlier post as well...very curious.

No response here.

I haven't tried -- I just contact the Loyalty Ambassador I always work with for just about any Omni/SG need I have.

Yeah, this sort of shady behavior is par for the course at Omni, in my experience. When you're *at* the property, everybody bends over backwards for you and the staff is wonderfully helpful.

But, when you talk to the corporate folks, they seem to forget where they work. Nobody seems to actually know anything about how things work. Everyone is super nice and professional and can help navigate some of the different offers regarding rooms (aka - they're good sales people). But details of program specifics - especially when you do things that are out of the norm - are sometimes... lacking. Ditto with the PR surrounding the SG program.

The only 3 things I learned about the program is: Airlines miles are per stay, not per night, discounted rates not gotten through they're own website do not count and everything takes days (weeks, sometimes) to show up on the account.

I just stayed at the Omni in downtown Austin and have to say, was VERY impressive with the quality of service and attention to detal. Stayed on the club level was very much impressed with the food for Breakfast and the afternoon drinks and snacks. Much better then what I get at Sheraton. I need to start looking for a better chain of hotels when I travel.