Starwood Lurker

As a new benefit, Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express Cardmembers can get their 3rd night free when they stay two consecutive nights at participating Sheraton hotels and resorts worldwide. To celebrate, SPG and Amex are offering Cardmembers a chance to win a 3-day weekend getaway at a Sheraton hotel or resort every Thursday, from November 4th through December 1st.

Thursday is the new Friday for SPG Amex Cardmembers.

Visit http://bit.ly/aG2bAh to find out more or to enter the TGIT Giveaway.

Best regards,

William

JFKSFOLAX_friend

I thought you were traveling or on vacation?

Starwood Lurker

I am traveling on business...which means that I am working...and since most of that work involves Flyertalk, here I am...even if it is only intermittent.

Best regards,

William

crm1712

Where is the participating list of Sheraton's for 3rd night free for cardmembers?

CarolDisney1

And how do you book this? I tried to book one and can't figure that out at all... it does not show on the special offers etc....

bsdstone

Thank "Goodness"? You are SO PC William!

AndrewT84

I think you have to use this link:

http://www.starwoodhotels.com/promot...AMEX_PROMOTION

Sounds like a good promotion. I wonder how the rates are? ::goes to do a few checks::

sc flier

Use Promo codes ZRA and ZHA as referenced in the link provided by AndrewT84.

I checked the Sheraton (North) Charleston Airport Hotel for Thanksgiving weekend.
ZRA came out to about $92 after discount.
AAA and LTO rates were both over $100.
BAR $139

Z3R was also offered for the same price as ZRA.

Note that this is not a resort, but it has the ZRA/Z3R "resort" rates rather than the ZHA/Z3H "hotel" rates. The difference is in the days of the week for which the rate is offered. Since this hotel is in a resort destination area in which weekend prices are often more expensive than weekdays, it offers the rate all week rather than only on weekends. The promo search page should offer the appropriate code for each property. If entering the promo codes manually, you may have to try both promo codes at some properties.

ramsfan

this does not seem well set up. Using the link in post 7 and trying NY, NY for Jan 5 to 8 , i get "The promotion code you requested is invalid. The following choices are available..." And thgen the rates are no better than normal.

Its really frustrating when these posssibly good deals are to difficult to use.

ramsfan

trying the link in post 1 it seems this is only for US residents.

If so it would have been nice if that were specified up front William. SPG has asked in the past if it should worry about being seen as too US centric. My usual response is no, but here it seems you have made that mistake.

sc flier

It might be nice if the calendars on the main promo page showed which days of the week are eligible for check-in with the corresponding promo code. It would definitely be nice if the average user didn't have to read through the T&Cs in order to learn that there are day-of-week restrictions for the ZHA code. It would be easy for SPG to state this directly on the promo's homepage or below each hotel name as they get listed. For the above scenario, the ZHA promo rates aren't available because Jan 5 is a Wednesday. It is available for Jan 6 - 9, though.

From the T&Cs:The T&Cs don't mention that some Hotels use the promo code and corresponding rules designed mainly for Resorts. (See my earlier post.)

My other gripe about the promo's homepage:
I don't understand why we are back to another page that requires finding a hotel by a series of selection boxes to find a specific city name. This is tolerable for NY, NY. But it's less than ideal for marketing hotels such as the Sheraton Charleston Airport in North Charleston, SC; the Sheraton Minneapolis West Hotel in Minnetonka, MN; or the Sheraton Hartford Hotel in East Hartford, CT. Or the Sheraton Laguna Guam Resort in Tamuning, Guam, North America. These hoops are just one of the reasons why I instead prefer to enter promo codes manually through spg.com.

DHAST

No it's not. It is *so* tedious to try and wade through these promo pages. I don't get it. What's the point? As another poster pointed out, even if you do have the patience to wade through the menus, most of the time you end up getting a "this code is invalid." Well, tell me what I need to do to make it work.

Promo pages should come with a C&P-style "availability" calendar. If you're going to make me wade through all of those menus, don't leave me hanging with the digital version of the middle finger yelling "sucker."

I like to wade through promos to see how good rates are -- perhaps I could be tempted to use an offer if its decent. But the promo pages are so cumbersome for me to use that many times I don't even bother. And this is where *W loses -- if they can't even get my eyes on their product, they have no chance of getting that incremental business.

pbiflyer

A lot of people here's work involves mostly Flyertalk. Their bosses just don't know about it.

sc flier

You're right. It's not actually tolerable. I just couldn't think of the right adjective, and I was trying to be gentle.

Better as follows?
At least some of SPG's other similarly-organized promo pages present a list of properties before having to narrow things down to the city level. Some at least stop by letting you view the list at the state level.

Regardless, I would have thought that SPG would've figured out over the years which methods of organizing such searches work better than others. Some of these templates should have been retired long ago.

Starwood Lurker

This is a new benefit only for U. S. SPG AMEX cardholders that was announced earlier this year, so my apologies for not stating the obvious.

Best regards,

William