Hotels, airline change frequent travel programs

By Joe Brancatelli

If you have any doubt at all that hotel chains are getting as good as the airlines at playing shell games with their frequency programs, you can disabuse yourself of that quaint notion. As you surely know by now, hotel frequent-stay award charts are based on each hotel’s “average daily rate” (ADR). When the rate goes up, the price you pay in points goes up because the hotel chains raise the charge in line with the increase. But what happens when the average daily rate goes down? You guessed it: Hotel chains have a different take.

Hilton HHonors raised its award prices for 2010, claiming the 20 percent devaluation was overdue. Now comes word that Starwood Hotels Preferred Guest will not be making any changes in its 2010 rewards chart. This despite a 2009 ADR decline in the range of 15-20 percent. Starwood’s explanation? It’s protecting you from future ADR increases. Which, of course, is not only illogical — if anything, ADRs will decrease again in 2010 — but also an outright rejection of how award prices have been calculated in the past.

Marriott Rewards, Marriott’s frequent stay program, will shift 650 hotels around its award chart this month. The chain says 350 hotels will decrease by one point category and 300 hotels will move up one level. Almost all of the changes are in Categories 1-5, the lower tiers of the programs. At the top end, hotels in London, Paris, Boston, New York and Rome are moving down. Six Hawaii properties also drop a category.United Airlines says it will revise the award chart for Mileage Plus on April 27, 2010. The changes, surprisingly enough, are largely neutral. Some awards have been adjusted upward and some downward. Most of the changes seem to better align Mileage Plus with the Continental Airlines OnePass program. (Continental, of course, is now United’s partner in the Star Alliance.)