Hotel Loyalty - How Did You Decide?
 

I've always shown loyalty to airlines and now I'm going to start showing loyalty to hotels. How did you decide which program to join? Starwood, Hilton, Hyatt, Marriot.... they are all great. What was your deciding factor?

I want to hear the good, bad, and the ugly about every chain. Fire away! Thanks in advance for helping me with my decision.

I find hotel loyalty hard for a number of reasons. The biggest is that consistency within brands is very hard. To make my point, I will break-down two of the more popular US chains: Starwood and Marriott.

Starwood. Their upperscale properties are very nice (St. Regis). Their mid-levels (Westin) are also very good. Their low levels (Sheraton, 4 Points, etc.) really are quite terrible, IMHO.

Marriott. Their uppserscale properties are superb (Regis). Their mid-levels (Marriott) are not as nice as Westin. Their low levels (Courtyard, Fairfield) are typically nicer (and cleaner) than Starwood's counterpart. Again, IMHO.

The problem is, I often stay at the mid-levels but will stay at low-levels at times as well. So what's the best chain for me?

My guidelines for this are strictly according to my own personal travel patterns.

Way back when, when there was only Hilton, and only Sheraton, I chose Marriott because I was far more likely to find a Marriott property to stay in..they had Marriott, Residence Inn and Courtyard. Worked for me.

Now, though, the situation is diff...Hilton has a number of properties, as does Starwood (Sheraton).

So you just have to go with what works for you, given your travel patterns. Now, though, you have a much wider range of choices.

Good about Marriott: Great concierge lounges in a lot of properties; Platinum gifts (which were sometimes the ONLY thing I had to eat after arriving late due to misconnected Delta flights...and, not a problem checking in a 2 or 3 am)
Bad about Marriott: Takes a whole lot of stays to get to Gold or Plat; also room upgrades are very hit or miss.


Good about Hilton: In my experience, not too bad about free breakfasts.
Bad about Hilton: Their lounges do not compare to Marriott's where I've stayed; also their Diamond level is now available to almost everyone, where before it was an unadvertised "super elite" level. Now, anyone can get it with a certain level of stays and everyone knows about it...about equal to Marriott Platinum today...

Starwood: Absolutely don't know. My only experience was with only one property, and it did not impress me at all. But, that was just one property--you can't judge a chain by one property.

Hyatt: Great hotels, at least the two I've stayed at. That isn't enough to judge the chain.

Hotel loyalty is a lot harder than airline loyalty, because properties within any given brand vary wildly. There are great Hampton Inns and horrific Hampton Inns, fine Four Points and sickmaking Four Points, etc. So -- if I willingly endure horrid hotels to achieve elite status with a chain, I'm rewarding (or at least not penalizing) bad performance and I feel like I've been bought off with points.

That said, I put the most effort into HHonors because I think Hilton Garden Inns are among the most consistent brands, even though pricing can vary and they're not in enough places. (Full-service Hiltons are all over the lot... some very nice, like the Vancouver, BC airport property; some criminally bad, like the downtown Seattle property. So I tend to avoid them because I don't know what to expect.) If there's no HGI where I'm going, I'm OK with a Hampton Inn as a backup.

Second place goes to Marriott, because I like Courtyards. Starwood properties are really uneven, Hyatts aren't in enough places, and Best Western isn't a cohesive brand at all -- they're all independent properties, some OK, some just awful.

In every case I prefer the more modest brands (HGIs, Courtyards, Four Points) to the full-service hotels.

To add to what the other posters have said, it can also depend on your travel pattens, and what your corporate policies allow (if applicable). For example, this year all of my travel has been international, and where I've been at, Starwood properties have either been limited, or priced far outside the corporate travel policies. I've found that for my travel patterns, the Hilton properties have offered far more choices, and my redemption options are good as well.

I would suggest you figure out where you usually are travelling to, and what properties you're more likely to want to stay at, and go from there!

I ended up settling on Le Meridien hotels, purely out of the quality of the hotels (best in the price range I'm given as a budget) in the destinations I most frequently travel to. The Moments scheme isn't as good as something like SPG, but, informally, the hotels are extremely generous towards gold card holders.

Strangely, it's their 'home' hotels, in Paris, that I'm least likely to stay at. Their excellent hotels in Vienna, Budapest and (for the service) Amsterdam put them very much to shame.

I did flirt with Priority Club and Marriott Rewards in the past, but quickly discovered I can't stomach the carbon-copy hotels that these chains seem to offer in Europe.

I went with SPG as they were the only chain that my travel pattern (and travel budget) would allow me to reach top tier. Every other programme has holes in their coverage (Hyatt being a particular problem). Even so, I do not go out of my stay to stay in Starwood properties. In Manila there is only the Westin Philippine Plaza. The Shangri-La is better located and a nicer hotel so that is where I stay. With an airline I am more prepared to inconvenience myself - irrational consumer behaviour I guess. Perhaps because the rewards of airline miles (i.e. Concorde, F flights LHR - SYD) are more aspirational than hotel rewards.

I've SPG to be a pretty good programme with reasonably consistent benefits and excellent (if slightly expensive rewards). Several colleagues have joined and seem happy too.

We spread our travel between Marriott and Hilton and have a credit card for each. Those carry fees but provide Silver Elite level. My husband is retired but I travel on business regularly and usually end up in one or the other, and when we're traveling on our own we usually find a Courtyard, Fairfield, Hampton Inn, etc.

Like the previous posters, we've found good and bad properties in both chains. Reward redemption has been reasonable and we accumulate a lot of points because we charge things like college tuition and home improvements on the credit cards (then pay them off immediately). I'd give the slight edge to Hilton because of their occasional promotions to instant Gold status. People who actually stay that many nights may complain (justifiably) that it dilutes the value of their status, but we love having lounge access and a few extra perks when we travel.